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headlesssamurai · 5 years ago

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My Lazy, Poor, Stupid Person’s Attempt to Paint Tabletop Miniatures

by headless

This has nothing to do with covid-19 really, it’s just something I reckoned I’d share. For several years I’ve played Dungeons & Dragons, and occasionally others like Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green, or Shadowrun. Though, I say ‘play’, when I mostly run games as a Dungeon Master. It’s one of those “hobbies” that is a lot of fun for someone like me, but requires a ton of dedication, so it isn’t always easy to get a dedicated group together.

Anyhow, I generally homebrew settings and adventures, never really been too big on running pre-written games, even if some of them are fantastically written. And one of the most frustrating things is I some times want to have a miniature on the battle grid that looks a certain way. This is hardly a big deal, since miniatures are just markers meant for reference in combat encounters, the real image of the characters is in all of our heads.

Still, I sometimes want to have something especially specific, a lot of the players in my current group appreciate cool looking miniatures, and seeing as I’m usually hard-up for cash, I can’t always buy pre-painted mini-figures, unless I get a good bulk deal on ebay or something.

One of my recent attempts to acquire bulk miniatures came a few years back when I realized during the 4E days, Wizards of the Coast had released boxed board games themed with the D&D style, which all came with a great deal of unpainted miniatures; these came in sets like Wrath of Ashardalon, or The Legend of Drizzt, with lots of themed minis for the board game’s scenario.

Anyhow, I’ve had a ton of these unpainted miniatures forever and use them often for nobody-NPCs and other characters the players run across. Lately, however, the group I’ve been running in a campaign for about eleven months (usually weekly), ran across a problem where their dragonborn ranger Grixxis was captured by and then negotiated his away out of the clutches of this ancient entity who calls herself Gorgoth (who appears to be a pale, beautiful young woman, but probably isn’t; even the not so arcane-y Grixxis intuited that much). She was actually impressed that he resisted her Sleep spell, and offered him a deal, she’d let him go but he needs to complete a task for her in the next seven days, and if it isn’t completed in that time frame his soul will be bound to her forever.

The task was to go to a mountaintop and retrieve something that resides there, though Gorgoth did not explain what the object was, so the party set off to find this mysterious mountain. The journey led them to an area of bad wilderness where no one lives, and where roving bands of orcs constantly hunt and war with one another, so only a few people know anything about that region. The party ended up hiring a guide, who was a wood elf exile named Skaya. They seemed to be intrigued by her because she’s living in a city which is currently at war with wood elves, so there’s a lot of prejudice and racism against her kind. Skaya does have facial tattoos that indicate she’s been exiled from her tribe and therefore no longer truly considered by her people to be a wood elf (their worst form of punishment in this universe), but still, the party seemed immediately fascinated by this single NPC among the potential seven or so they might’ve hired for this expedition.

Anyhow, my players have only gotten truly invested in one other NPC they’ve met before this; a small little orc toddler named Gruuba who they saved from a bunch of slave trading bandits early on in the campaign. I’ve had difficulty finding a good miniature for Gruuba too (because she’s really small and scrawny), but since she’s at the same developmental level as a human six year-old they try to keep her out of combat scenarios (despite Gruuba’s excited insistence that she enjoys using clubs “for smashings”). Since the party have begun to really enjoy Skaya as character, the longer they’ve slowly, slowly gotten to know more about her stand-offish personal history, I really wanted to get a miniature for her that reflected my image of her better than the one I’d been using.

So, even though I got basically no experience doing so, I bought a miniature from Reaper Miniatures, and after looking up a few tutorial vids for beginners like me, I set about trying to paint my first mini-figs.

Two things, if you’re looking into this yourself; First, I’m not totally unartistic, I write creatively and I sketch with pencils and ink. Painting’s fairly new to me, but it’s not like I have absolutely no artistic talent. I also solder a lot of really small wires and components in my normal daily job, so I may have better muscle control for this sort of thing than some people. I only mention this because I may have had a few advantages in this undertaking. I just don’t want to make people overly confident, keep things in perspective. So whatever your level of expertise at this, if you want to start just try to patiently measure your expectations, and don’t get discouraged if your first results aren’t so great. All things improve with time.

And B. if you’re poor, lazy, and stupid like me, there’re ways to get around that. This video I watched gave me a good rundown of the basic steps which are; - scrub the plastic down with some dish soap, luke-warm water, and a toothbrush; allow at least 1 hour to dry (I let them sit for a day because I’m paranoid), and be sure there’s no lingering moisture before you start painting - get a good primer or base coat on the model before you start adding other colors; lighter base coats allow more colors to show up easier, while darker base coats tend to make the colors you paint over them darker - stay calm and take your time - try to paint the colors that’ll go under other colors first, like, if a barbarian dude is shirtless but’s wearing a few pieces of armor, paint his shirtless skin first, then paint the armor he’s wearing second because it layers over better that way - use thinner paints and multiple coats of a color to get an even final color instead of one thick coat - allow each coat of paint to dry for 10 - 20 minutes before applying the next coat - learn about washes, pigments, and inks, because they’re awesome - get a decent varnish for a final protective coat, matte varnishes make the model look dryer and flat, gloss varnishes make the model look shiny and wet, if you do a coat of gloss and a coat of matte varnish it equalizes it pretty good

And this video here sort of laid to rest my fears that I’ll need to spend $600 on paints and washes and stuff. The very helpful lady in that video explains how she uses generic acrylic paints from the craft store (I got mine at Wal-Mart) to paint her Warhammer miniatures, and she even offers a method of making your own washes from a combination of paint and flavorless mouth wash. It’s genius. So try not to stress too much about buying the really nice brand name paints, because it’s not necessary, those paints just have an optimal mix I think, otherwise they’re the same damn thing as generic acrylic paints. Also, you’re just trying to learn, so unless you really, really feel like emptying your bank account, just use the generic stuff.

I started out painting something I didn’t care about. I wanted my miniature for Skaya to look badass and awesome, so I wanted to start with some practice miniatures. Grabbed a few from those 4E board game sets and gave it a shot. But I had also recently gotten hold of a Goliath Barbarian miniature from the Player’s Handbook Heroes sets (also from the 4E days) a rare find, since it usually goes for like $60.00 by itself. Randomly found some dude on ebay selling an unopened box set for $20.00, so I got a wild elf druid and a human berserker along with it. So I started out touching up the goliath’s armor to make it look more like armor and less like weird blue stuff.

Here’s a before-and-after for him (I didn’t take photos of them before because I wasn’t anticipating this, so I just found examples from around the web):

Next I tried a re-paint. A friend of mine had recently guest-played in my campaign and created a half-drow monk (his backstory was fantastic), so since nothing like that exists, I took a Soulknife Infiltrator miniature seen here:

And repainted it to sort of look like his half-drow Monk of the Open Palm:

I finally had the courage to do a full paint, so I grabbed the Dragonborn Elementalist from the Wrath of Ashardalon box, and painted her up with reddish scales (I’m one of those who thinks dragonborn should have physical attributes of their heritage).

In the box her name’s Heskan. I definitely used way too much wash on this one so she looks super shiny.

I then took the orc archers in that same box, and not really paying too much attention this time, quickly painted them, because I lack many orc archers:

At this point, I felt it was time to finally paint Skaya, the wood elf exile. I used the Reaper Bones model Deladrin, Female Assassin ($1.99) for Skaya’s mini.

And taking way more hours than I did on the others, which were only about 1-3 hours each, when you count waiting for the coats to dry, I managed to sort of make her look like Skaya, I guess:

After this, the fact that it wasn’t complete and utter shit, which is what I expected, I was encouraged. So I tried to do out party’s tortle cleric, named Daruuk of Chult (who oddly speaks with a Slavic accent, so that’s how people from Chult sound in our campaign), for whom we’ve lacked an accurate mini-figure for some time. I bought a pack of Spikeshell Warriors ($2.99) from the Reaper Bones line.

But Daruuk characteristically wields a large shield and a warhammer, so for some reason I got super detailed and bought a pack of loose shields from the Reaper Bones line ($0.99), then bought Halbarad ($1.49) a human cleric.

I clipped off Halbarad’s hammer at the hilt, then I trimmed the spikes off of the spikeshell warrior’s club, and used a dremel to carfully mill a hole inside the shaft of the spikeshell’s club, then pinned the hammer inside and secured it with gorilla gel. I used an actual cork board pin to push the shield onto the spikshell’s offhand after cutting off his turtle shell shield in order to pin it before gluing, then clipped off the rest of the cork board pin. Somehow, this ended up making the shield look meaner because it now has a like pyramidal spike sticking out the center. After allowing the glue to dry I painted him up, and my attempt at Daruuk the Death Cleric turned out thus:

I guess his hammer looks sort of Acme-level cartoony, but he’s a giant 350 lb. turtle-man who talks like Omega Red from X-Men The Animated Series, so I’m okay with that. The spikeshell also fits well with the razorback sub-race feature I allowed Daruuk’s player to homebrew for himself. I was really proud of this one.

Finally, because I’m an insane asshole who is getting obsessed with my new hobby, I decided it was dragons or bust. So I bought a pre-primed unpainted Young Blue Dragon from WizKids ($13.99).

And spent, like, three days meticulously testing different paint layers to see how they come out. I tried to paint her in the tradition of blue dragons as they appear in the art of Forgotten Realms material, but gave her a somewhat darker cast, and added metallic blue layers to her claws and spinal ridges. I still need to paint her base, put some highlights on her eyes to accentuate the glowing effect and add my washes to give her a final layer of dimension, but here’s how she came out so far:

Behold, Stormfang! Mistress of Thunder...

Anyhow.

This is super long and I wonder if anyone will bother to read any of it. But just wanted to put this out there. From a dude who, if you asked me a year ago if I thought I could do this, I’d have said I’m too stupid, poor, and lazy. I still think of myself as all of those things. The real pros use crazy detailed techniques with like seven layered highlights on their models, and airbrushes and all kinds of other madness. I use maybe three coats total and I don’t get too worked up if I make a mistake here and there, and I haven’t spent more than maybe fifty bucks total across six weeks, and most of that was wasting paints because I was still learning how to mix different shades.

So if you got something you feel like you’ve always wanted to do but are too stupid, poor, and lazy to figure out, just go for it yo. I managed to crack out these bastards and I still think I suck, but it’s way better looking than I expected. For real though, you should see some of those Warhammer players, they got mad crazy god skills at this stuff compared to me. But your level of skill isn’t the point. The point is to have that moment with that thing you did, and look at it, and just go “Yeh, I did that” when at one time you never believed you ever could.

There’s always going to be somebody better than you, but even they, like all of us, are still learning.

侍 headless

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andytfish · 4 years ago

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FREELANCE GUiDANCE: A 10 Part Series - #3 Setting Up Work Parameters

One of the benefits of Freelancing is the FREEDOM but sometimes too much freedom leads to disorganization and chaos. Possibly the biggest challenger a Freelancer faces is the ability to be his own boss-- with no one constantly over your shoulder, no fear of a walk thru by the uppity mucks there's plenty of opportunity to slack off, and that will kill your career.

1. ESTABLISH YOUR WORK HOURS - This should be a "general" guide because as I've already covered sometimes creativity cannot be caged. Sometimes that great idea or inspiration comes at 2 in the morning rather than at 9. Everyone is different and this is a find your way kind of rule. During a week of working freelance take occasion to jot down notes of the time and productivity-- you'll likely see a pattern emerge. In my own case I like to get an early start but seldom do. But after years of study I've discovered my peak productivity blocks in the day- 5am-8am and 2pm to 10pm. We'll get into this a bit further below.

2. ESTABLISH A WORK AREA - This is the BIGGEST key for me. I don't allow my work to spread out all over the house. I work ONLY in my studio space. The entire third floor of my house is my office area. It houses my computers, drawing tables, easels, supplies and reference material. I DON'T spend ANY time in there NOT working. You wouldn't drive to your corporate office job so you can search eBay would you? I treat my work area with the same respect.

3. KNOW WHEN A JOB IS NOT THE RIGHT FIT - It’s hard when you're just starting out to turn down a job, but sometimes (especially early on) things come along that are not right for you. I can't draw cute. I can't. Bunnies might start KIND OF cute but eventually they're going to look depraved. It's not in my makeup. Early in my career I would have taken that gig and kept at it killing myself and doing four times the work to make it right for the client. Now I know better. You turn down the WRONG job so you're available when the RIGHT job comes along.

4. DEADLINES TRUMP EVERYTHING - My kids from an early age knew the phrase "Dad's on a deadline" -- which meant I'm a phantom that might pop up out of my studio 2-3 times a week. The Deadline is the thing. I don't miss deadlines. This should not be your every week routine— you need to have a life, but those deadline crunch times are special circumstances.

5. SET UP PRODUCTIVITY - Da Vinci used a similar schedule and I've found this works; 45-90 minute working sessions with breaks in between makes me MUCH more productive.

LET'S GET A LITTLE FURTHER IN-DEPTH to my talking points

1- Establishing Your Work Hours-- I would suggest you even buy yourself an OPEN/CLOSED sign that you can put outside your workroom door. It doesn't have to be a fancy neon one, it can be a simple cardboard one. In my studio I use to blowmold ghosts that sit at the edge of my desk-- when they're on I'm working. It not only lets other people know you're "at work" it gets yourself into the right frame of mind.

Share your working hours with significant others. Let them know you're going to be struggling to "work from home" and you'll need their help. They wouldn't walk into your office on Park Avenue with your co-workers all around and your boss down the hall clutching the light bill and saying we need to talk about that neon beer sign you must have on 24 hours a day-- they would wait until you're home from work, and just because work is now home there should be no difference.

They need to understand that work from home does NOT mean you don't work. It does not mean every elderly relative can expect you to shuttle them around to doctor appointments, it doesn't mean you're instantly the chaperone at juniors Zoo trip. YOU ARE STILL WORKING just AT HOME.

You’ll need to decide if you are going to follow a standard Monday-Friday work week or will you take Mondays and Tuesdays off? Resist the urge to not take days off because money is coming in. I strongly advocate days off for your own mental health. It's easy to swing the opposite direction in Freelance and work 24/7.

One of the first things I wanted when I went Freelance was weekends off. After years of working in retail I never got to enjoy them. In retail I had every Sunday and Wednesday off. SPLIT days-- and I was looking forward to two together. It seemed like a dream to me.

The downside to being off weekends is so is everyone else. So those Wednesday trips to the bank or the post office I used to make were a breeze compared to trying to go on Saturday morning.

Now, I schedule days off (and to be honest A Day Off) the week I'm working. It allows me to better balance projects. And being completely honest, I LOVE working freelance, sometimes taking a day off is like punishment. But even on the weeks I don't take a day off I take a morning off, or an afternoon, or an evening-- that works for me. Starting out-- I'd give yourself at least one day off each week as you're figuring out what works for you.

How About Holidays? That seems like a no-brainer until you're on that big project and it's due Dec 27th and using the Organizational skills I set up for you in Session 1 you realize you're behind. Suddenly you have a virtual scale in front of you held by Santa Claus with family and friends on one side and the client on the other.

Deciding up front that it's a hard and fast rule that you won't work CERTAIN holidays is a concession I made right away. I don't work on Christmas-- in fact I don't work two days BEFORE Christmas and I don't work the week FOLLOWING Christmas up through to Jan 2nd. I don't. Nope, not gonna do it.

Why? I like Christmas and it's a holiday I look forward to. I work extremely hard up to Dec 22nd but truth be told Christmas is VERY Slow in Freelance because most clients aren't thinking about projects either. So a studio shut down is perfectly acceptable.

But the OTHER 99 holidays on the calendar? They are all up for grabs. I don't work the night of my wife's Birthday and I keep the schedule light during the day-- but other than Xmas, New Years and my Wife's Birthday I will work any other holiday even at the drop of a hat.

Knowing this helps me keep the stress level down. My family knowing this keeps them from asking me why I'm not coming to the Memorial Day cookout, or the Patriots Day party.

2. Establish a Work Area - My wife has her own studio on another floor of the house. We meet daily for Breakfast and Lunch which is a nice break. Her studio is very zen. Very few things, a handful of books, some sparse furniture and warm inviting lights with some inspirational artwork hanging prominently around the room. Mine is the polar opposite of Zen. It's loaded like a High School locker. There is not an inch of space on my walls or shelves that is not filled with comics, posters, original art, toys, action figures, vintage japanese vinyl toys, a lifesize Frankenstein, an Adam West Batman Cowl, a Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man Mask a Tony the Tiger display head, Darth Vader mask, more toys, more art more action figures and did I mention Books? Libraries come to me to borrow things. There are THOUSANDS of books.

I love the kinetic cluttered energy it gives off. At Christmas time I decorate Frankenstein with colored lights. The rest of the year Halloween Lights hang in my studio. It's my own personal Batcave-- all I'm missing is a British Butler walking in with coffee and scones every forty five minutes.

But that space works for me. It gets me juiced up and ready to work.

That's how you need to set YOUR space. When you're just starting out you may have to incorporate a drawing or work area in another room because of space restraints. When I was first starting out in a one bedroom studio my bed was three feet from my drawing table. It made for some tough nights sleeping because it was hard to "turn off" working mode in the same room.

Regardless of space, make some for yourself. I have a good friend whose first studio space was a medium sized closet. It was actually kind of cool-- you had to climb in like a race car but once you were encased in the environment like a man piloting a lunar shuttle to the moon you were ready to work.

The point is to make this space YOUR work inspiration-- so make it a place you WANT to spend time in.

3. Know when a Job is NOT the Right Fit - Easy to say when you're established. You're going to take pretty much any job that comes along at first, and that's okay. Sometimes you don't even know the job isn't right for you until you're doing it. When we get to PART 5: GETTING PAID SON we'll look at how to budget for these types of jobs so at least you're getting paid well for something that isn't a fit.

Let's assume that despite your portfolio of Goth Animals someone comes to you thinking you'd be perfect for that highly detailed photo accurate oil painting of Grandma. That's not a good fit for you, you know it, they don't. But the light bill is due and there's not a lot else coming in right now so you're thinking hard about taking it. It's a fork in the road decision:

A. You take it and spend HOURS upon HOURS resisting the urge to give grandma dark undereyes and floppy ears. If you went with this option the biggest advice I can give you is do a lot of research and spend a LOT of time warming up. Look at portraits, look at Presidential Portraits and study the brush strokes. Grab your favorite sketchbook and some colored pencils and get to an art museum and do some sketching of the portraits in the collection. Get your head ready for the project and then give it your best shot.

B. Pass on it and recommend a friend you know who would be a better fit, earning Karma points from the friend and freeing yourself up for that job that WILL fit. Spend the downtime Marketing yourself (also coming up in the series) which is a better expenditure of your time and resources.

4. Deadlines Trump All - All my rules of work parameters combined with the skills I imparted in the ORGANIZATION session should lead you to a point where you don't have to work overtime, but in the real world we know that occasionally that IS going to happen. If you find yourself CONSTANTLY working overtime on projects re-evaluate your working methods and see if you are actually being productive or if you're wasting a lot of time.

5. SetUp Productivity - The eight hour workday became the norm at the turn of the last century and pretty much has been the standard ever since. This method goes back LONG before that to the days of Leonardo Da Vinci who often used this seemingly odd method to accomplish the amazing array of achievements he did over the course of his life.

It's simple-- you work in 45-90 minute sessions with breaks in between. During the session you do NOTHING but work. You don't answer the phone if it rings (that's why Voicemail was created) you don't check your email. You don't jump on IMDB to see who was the actor inside Darth Vader's suit (it was Dave Prowse, body builder and former Frankenstein actor). YOU WORK. Because SO much of our day is actually filled with distraction. That's OK if you work for SNIDELY WHIPLASH INDUSTRIES who is paying you a fat check to work 30% of the time, as a Freelancer you only get paid for the hours you actually WORK. Novel concept isn't it? It's the price you pay for being your own boss.

This is best accomplished either by setting up a PLAYLIST running the allotted time, or by streaming an episode of a TV series or even setting an alarm clock. Give it a try-- WORK for the allocated time and THEN take a break of 15-30 mins (also timed) to check your mail, return phone calls, do whatever-- you will be AMAZED at how this works if you can really be disciplined about it.

NEXT WEEK: LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS -- it's the difference between eating and not.

Andy Fish is a freelance artist and writer who has been living the lifestyle longer than there has been an iPhone on this planet. The advice given has worked for him, it might work for you, he hopes it does. But like all advice, take it with your own situation in mind. If you want to contact him shoot him an email [email protected]

#ADVICE #FREELANCE #FREELANCE LIFESTYLE

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mikaalyssa · 5 years ago

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Now Serving : In My Blood by Bo Bech

In My Blood (2018) is the first Now Serving event I went to. Now Serving is a cookbook store in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, and you can read some great stuff about the shop and the owners here. Ken and Michelle are warm, welcoming, and knowledgeable, and Frankie is adorable.

Confession: It took me so long to go to one of these because I just assumed you had to purchase the book being profiled in order to attend. Turns out it’s 100% free and purchases are optional (but really difficult to turn down!).

Danish chef Bo Bech (Restaurant Paustian, Geist) was wearing a black shirt and loose black shorts. Casual, friendly, easy-going. The night was moderated by Chad Robertson (founder of Tartine). He was sporting a baseball cap and has an assortment of floral tattoos on his arms, with a couple Eight Balls sprinkled in.

Tartine has recently expanded to LA, and Bech and Roberston crafted a special brunch prix fixe for the Manufactory. This story comes with the importance of being flexible and changing what doesn’t work. An uni + croissant dish wasn’t getting the attention it deserved, so for the second seating they moved the uni to a cracker.

It’s great listening to the restaurants and chefs that other chefs will mention. When Robertson picked Bech up from the airport, they went to Holbox for lunch. At one point during the talk, Bech makes a reference to Roy Choi’s Kogi truck. Bech called Roberton’s croissants one of the best in existence.

Bech has a slight accent but, as with most non-Americans, his English as an additional (Second? Third? Who knows.) is near perfect. Twice he asked if a word he said was indeed a word. And those words were “dishonest” and “diary.”

He was cheeky, too. A couple attendees left early. After the door closes behind him, he says it’d be great if they came back with a double espresso.

Bech often goes off-topic or askew, but you forgive him because everything he says is so engaging and important. There’s something about Europeans that you don’t see in Americans (personal opinion). He holds eye contact with such intent and really speaks to whomever he is speaking to. He would often grab Robertson’s leg or shoulder when speaking to him or about it.

This talk made me wish I had brought some sort of notebook, but taking in the moment was great as well. Some standout vignettes that I can remember, in no particular order.

Begeistret. This word is printed on the back of the book and means something along the lines of “enthusiasm.” It was the original name for the restaurant Geist in Copenhagen. There should be an enthusiasm about food, an enthusiasm about life, and Bech hoped the restaurant would foster and impart that enthusiasm. But perhaps it would not be an easy word for all to say, so it was shortened and the restaurant gained the name “Geist.”

It was meant to represent all the same ideas and feelings, but Bech learned later that it can mean “ghost” in other languages. But oh well.

Publishing. The book is self-published. It’s done the way Bech wanted it done, and not done the way a publishing house would have told him to do it. The photos are done by Bech (he would not call himself a photographer but he would call photography his hobby). And the watercolors are done by studio All the Way to Paris.

Writing a recipe. Is difficult! Because how do you explain what you have been doing naturally. The book was cut down from 200+ recipes to 100. Maybe because 100 is a nice number. Maybe because he was tired of writing recipes.

He grabs Robertson’s leg while saying, how are you supposed to explain how something should feel when you touch it? What size pan you should use and why? What color something should be when it’s done? When all these things are natural to him at this point.

He tried to make the recipes written as simply as possible. He didn’t want readers to get bogged down with words.

Eat your own food. He noticed and called out that chefs don’t really take the time to eat their food. They’ll taste spoonfuls here and there, but it’s so rare they sit and consume the full dish(es) as a guest would. Bech said, smartly, that chefs should be eating their own food. Really taking the time to see how it sits with you, feels with other dishes, etc. And when he had this realization, he himself made sure to sit down and eat his own food.

Proust Questionnaire. Bech didn’t talk about this, but while flipping through the book, one of the first elements (a section called “Safari”) is his answers to some questions, the Proust Questionnaire. It’s “said to be capable of revealing any person’s innermost thoughts.”

It was very fitting and very unsurprising that Bech opened with something like this. That honesty and authenticity really shone throughout the talk and sets the tone for the book.

Opening a restaurant. He described this as an act of good. If you’re opening a restaurant, you want to do something good for someone. If this isn’t what you want to do, perhaps you should not open a restaurant.

The Bottleneck. Bech described this term as one would describe “micromanagement.” He preached the important of stepping back and trusting others to fill in, because that’s how growth and evolution happen. And sometimes you’ll find that someone does something better or in a better way than you do. Again, it was great to hear someone in his position acknowledge that.

Don’t Be a Ghost. A little girl (I’m bad at aging children, but let’s say ten) was in the audience. At the end of the quick Q&A, he made sure to ask if she had any questions. She had none. Did she want to be a chef? She wasn’t giving verbal responses but I can assume her answer was either a “no” or a shrug because next he asked if she knew what she wanted to be. Dad pipes in to say she’s not sure yet.

Bech sits back and says, “I was a ghost until I was twenty-four.” Twenty-four was when he found a passion, his passion for food. Before his passion he was a ghost. He was collecting money so he could come home and hang out with his friends. “Don’t be a ghost.”

Upcoming. When asked about a next project, Bech did not confirm one way or the other, but offered this dream. He wants to study what happens at the dinner table and speak on it. Conversations, how we enjoy food in company. And to photograph it as well. If that project ever comes to fruition, I would love to check it out. (Or be part of it, honestly, one can dream).

There were so many more gems from this talk and this evening, but it’s getting late and if I don’t finish this soon I’ll get bored of it and abandon.

I wasn’t planning on buying the book, because I’m trying to Marie Kondo my life and make intentional purchases. But his personality really sold me, and my friends saying they were sold really sold me.

When we got to the register, it was a shocking $93.08 (the most I have ever spent on any singular book, easily), but we were at the point of no return.

All books had been pre-signed, but Bech was at the register to personalize and chit chat. Again, really holds eye contact, really makes you feel everything he’s saying is genuine and just for you.

When I got home and flipped through the self-published behemoth, it became clear it was so much more than a cookbook. It’s an art book. And that $90 price tag started to make more and more sense.

I also did some internet digging, because I was curious. In My Blood cannot be found via Barnes and Noble. It’s available on Amazon but only through third party sellers, and starting at around $160. There’s a signed copy on ebay going for $190 (and that’s marked as a 33% decrease in price).

It can, of course, be bought directly through his site. But I couldn’t begin to guess what an international shipping fee looks like.

As always, consider buying books directly from the author or from your local independent bookstore :)

Looking forward to many more Now Serving events (thought my wallet is going to need to chill).

#bo bech #chad robertson #chef #now serving #bookstore #book event #book signing #cookbook #cooking #geist #tartine #2019 #los angeles #book #event

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lizseyi · 2 years ago

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The Best Cocktail Content Creators for Home Bar Enthusiasts - Flavour Blaster

How to make professional-looking cocktails at home

That internet is rammed full of people telling you what they think they know about cocktails. You know the drill, someone posts their life story before showing you a recipe that includes shop-bought premixes and some very dodgy photos of tepid-looking drinks in mason jars. We’ve all tasted this kind of cocktail in real life, and it’s not a pleasant experience. But tip towards the other end of the spectrum, and you've got professional bartenders sharing exquisite-looking drinks with hardly any details on how to make them. The trick is finding a writer who knows their audience — the home bartending enthusiast — but also knows their onions when concocting good cocktails.

Like most things, making cocktails combines the art of simplicity in the process and the complexity of knowledge in the preparation. So we asked drinks writer and ex-cocktail bartender Emily Goodman which bloggers she thinks will get your cocktails on point.

The Foundations

I'll start with JJ Goodman because he is perhaps the most famous and owns the most bars out of all the writers I’ll talk about. He also doesn't technically write a blog. So I’ll break all the rules before I even start. He did, however, write a fantastic book called Kitchen Cocktails that I recommend any home bar enthusiast reads before they even begin to build a cocktail bar at home.

Why? JJ has won global cocktail competitions, been on 50 most influential people and 30 under 30 press lists, and he and his business partner won BBC Two’s gastronomic reality TV show The Restaurant in 2009. He owns Cocktail Club, a multisite brand with venues in London, Bristol, Reading, Exeter, Cardiff and Birmingham that began with a small basement bar just off Shaftesbury Avenue. He also founded Night cap Plc (an umbrella for the Adventure Bar, Barrio Bar Familia and Cocktail Club brands) and Nightcap Bar Academy, a staff training and retention hub.

His book Kitchen Cocktails; recipes of the London Cocktail Club was explicitly written for people who need to make cocktails in the kitchen at home using a supermarket budget and widely available products. Home bartenders are his audience; he doesn't shy away from that to make himself look big or clever. This is a bible and reference book rolled into one. Start here, and you won't go wrong.

In-Depth

The second person I recommend is well-known in the drinks industry. Simon Difford started working in the drinks trade selling spirit and liquors in the nineties, then went on to found Class bar magazine and later theDifford’s Guide, both of which are still running.

However, it's the latter that home bartenders will really find useful. While Class bar magazine is an industry-lead publication, the Difford’s Guide is a vast online compendium of cocktails used by consumers and professionals alike. Look up any drink, and you'll find the recipe in millilitres, ounces or ratios. You'll get advice on which brands to use and where you can buy them and a little potted history of each cocktail that is both thorough and entertaining.

Delving into History

Speaking of history, if you like to delve deep into the annals of time to help you connect with a recipe, then you need to check out Dr Adam Elan-Elmegirab. He is an award-winning bartender who began blogging about the origins of classic cocktails when the internet was in its infancy. Through his practice of researching old recipes and then writing about them on his blog, he was driven to search for products that have gone out of fashion. Specifically, he looked for Boker’s Bitters because it was used in possibly the first martini recipe ever recorded, a drink called the Martinez.

He found that Boker’s Bitters was no longer in use nor available to buy. So to make his cocktail in the most traditional way, he sourced an ancient bottle of it on eBay and began backwards engineering the flavours to recreate a supply for himself.

He wrote about this process on his blog, and people were so interested that they began writing to him to ask for some for their own use. Soon he was bottling and selling the little tinctures from his home in Aberdeen to bartenders all over the globe. He grew his range and invented some of his own products. He now owns a spirit and liqueur distillery called The House of Botanicals, from where he creates several traditional cocktail ingredients.

It helps with cocktails, as in literature, to get to grips with the classics, so you have a solid foundation of understanding and techniques to begin exploring your own recipes.

Unfortunately, many of his original blog posts don’t exist anymore, but he is a brilliant content creator, and his website, The House of Botanicals, has links to a newsletter, and various social media accounts where he posts ‘How To’ videos for loads of fantastic classic cocktails.

Gin Fundamentals

I realise this list is very male-dominated so far, and I want you to know that I include this next writer not because she is a woman but because she belongs here in her own right. Emma Stokes, aka Gin Monkey, is a force of nature. Science buff by day and gin lush by night, she is the co-creator of World Gin Day and has written three essential posts on her Gin Monkey website 1) how to make a gin and tonic at home, 2) how to order a martini and 3) how to make gin at home. These three fundamentals are worth reading if you’re interested in working around the gin category.

Fun Times!

I couldn’t leave without mentioning someone a generation younger than me. It wouldn’t be fair or proper. Yes, Pip Jolley is an influencer, but she is incredibly good at her job, and her side hustle @Drinkswithbarberella is everything a home bar should be. Fun, spontaneous, a bit OTT and everything is made with easily sourced ingredients that aren’t going to break the bank. If you’ve done some homework and now you want to have some fun, she has plenty of inspiration for both recipes and the visual presentation of garnishing homemade cocktails. Neither is easy to do without a professional bar set up behind you.

Let’s Get Professional

So, let’s say that you’ve done a grounding in the classics, tried the irreverent and fun, and now you want to get your teeth into something trickier. Now is the time to introduce Vlad the Slick Bartender. Not only is he a top-of-his-game professional, but he also makes YouTube videos that deconstruct some of the more complicated professional bartending tricks so you can do them at home. For example, his ‘How to Make Clear Ice at Home’ video will help you get the kind of ice you’ll find in five-star hotels using practical home bar equipment.

Brilliant, thanks, Emily! And now that you’ve got some support from the people of the internet on how to make professional-looking cocktails at home, you could take a look at our cocktail recipe page. It’ll show you a range of recipes you can use alongside our Flavour Blaster Mini. A home bar tool introduced after the incredible global success of our professional bar tool, which made its debut in 2019. We developed it with you in mind, allowing aspiring home bartenders just like you to garnish your cocktails in brand new ways!

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dutchfox358 · 3 years ago

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Bmx Supergoose Characteristics

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Description: Mongoose aluminium framed race bike, suitable for your local bmx track. Bottom Bracket: 8 spline 145mm axle w/ loose ball: Cranks: 3pc 8spline tubular heat-treated cr-mo.

Get the best deals on Mongoose Supergoose when you shop the largest online selection at eBay.com. Free shipping on many items Browse your favorite brands. Mongoose Supergoose BMX OEM Stickers. $10.00 shipping. Ending Dec 14 at 6:50AM PST 6d 1h. Mongoose Supergoose Bmx Pad Set. $15.00 shipping.

Mongoose Supergoose BMX Bike – Details Mongoose Supergoose survivor with a decent range of parts that include, Shimano DX pedals, Tuf Neck, Uni Seat, Pro Class rims and Dia-Compe MX1000 brakes. Scroll down for more photos.

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Ive got a (i think) 1982 supergoose. im not sure if all parts are original but i know the frame is an original chrome moly supergoose frame. First off can someone help me identify the bike, and second could someone help me find the value. serial number is j2008703

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According to this website your Mongoose was manufactured in October of 1982. It may or may not be a Supergoose though. If you scroll about 3/4 of the way down the page you'll see 'Serial numbers from 1981'. Under that heading it explains that the full cro-mo Supergoose had 3 holes in the brake bridge (2 slotted/ 1 round). If your frame doesn't have these 3 holes, then it's not a Supergoose. Also, it's hard to tell, but from your picture it appears that your fork may not be the stock one. The Mongooses of that era had the dropouts directly below the fork leg.

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Bmx Supergoose Characteristics Meaning

Bike Check Instagram @tkeck74

Thanks a lot for the info. Would you have any idea what a ballpark price would be?

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I'm glad that I could help. Were you able to determine which frame you have? Sorry, but I'm not able to put a value on your bike. You might want to ask the guys over here though. They should be able to give you an idea what your bike is worth.

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Bike Check Instagram @tkeck74

The bike only has one hole in the brake bridge. :/ would this decrease the value any?

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10/7/2014 8:46 PM Edited Date/Time:10/7/2014 8:48 PM

According to the brake bridge info on the Vintage Mongoose website your frame is not a Supergoose then. That being the case, I would guess that yours is a Motomag. The Motomag had what is referred to as a tri-moly frame. This means that the frame's front triangle tubing is chromoly while the rear triangle tubing is mild steel. This will most likely decrease the value but it's still a vintage frame and it will be worth something to a collector. As I said before, ask the guys over at BMX Museum and check out ebay to see what Motomags are currently going for. I hope this helps. Good luck and let us know what you find out.

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Bmx Supergoose Characteristics Model

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Bmx Supergoose Characteristics Chart

Looks like you just have the frame, cranks and chainwheel. Maybe seatclamp. All the other stuff looks very average. Good news. Os goose prices are on the rise. Maybe wait until early 2016 if want to sell. Holidays coming.

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junker-town · 3 years ago

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The rise and collapse of a scalper’s sports card empire

Bribes, parking lot deals, and the cards you never had a chance to buy.

Warning: The following story contains strong language.

Tyrone sits in the middle of his three monitor setup like the cockpit of a fighter jet, one hand grasping a cup of coffee, the other his vape, alternating between stimulants and watching a scramble over spots in his newest break. “This shit’s been up 40 minutes and we only got two slots left,” he yells to his two business partners, pulling cards for their latest singles orders.

“Tyrone,” who asked not to go by his real name to keep his anonymity, elevated his hobby for collecting cards into a business three years ago, and turned it into an empire. Now he’s coming face-to-face with it all collapsing. “I knew we didn’t have forever on this,” he says, “I just figured it’d be the feds shutting it down, not some dumbasses at Target.”

May 14th was the end of an era for Tyrone. Target made the announcement they would no longer sell NBA, NFL, MLB or Pokemon cards following an incident outside a Wisconsin store in which a customer pulled a gun on another who’d just purchased cards. Signs, now posted all over stores in the country, read “To ensure the safety of our guests and team members, effective May 14th, MLB, NFL, NBA and Pokemon cards will no longer be sold in stores until further notice.” Walmart has not made an official announcement at this time, though there’s increasing speculation that they too will pull cards from shelves.

“That shit had me f***** up,” Tyrone says, shaking his head. “I dunno how it’s been working up north, but ain’t nobody in my area getting good shit from Target anyway.”

Tyrone began turning his hobby into a business like anyone else trying to get cards. He arrived at stores early on Friday morning, learning that cards weren’t stocked by Target and Walmart employees, but rather independent merchandisers who would enter the store on distributors’ behalf, and place items on the shelves. Tyrone would wait until the merchandisers arrived to put out the new cards, then pounce on them, buying out the store and immediately flipping them on eBay. It was a weekly ritual. Hit a store, move to the next, do the same.

“I’d spend HOURS in the car each week,” he laughed, remembering his beginnings. Tyrone quickly realized there was too much inconsistency. Sometimes he’d miss the merchandiser, or they’d go to another store first and throw off his route. Random shoppers would buy a fat pack (a wrapped package of multiple packs) as their nostalgia kicked in, having no idea what they were buying. This made his stock unreliable.

“It got exhausting, and frustrating as shit got bigger. That’s when I got smart about it.”

I know Luka and Ja, not Squirtle and shit.

After months of shadowing deliveries and driving around, Tyrone approached one of the merchandisers in a Walmart parking lot, and befriended them. He needed as much product as he could get his hands on, they needed to do their job. “I made it work for both of us.”

At the time the only thing really popping was basketball cards, particularly the highly sought after Panini Prizm series. If you went to Target or Walmart hoping to find Prizm basketball only to find it out of stock, there’s a good chance Tyrone had it, and you never had a chance of buying it.

“It was so easy back then,” he says. “They’d come in, put the shit on the shelves, snap a photo with their phone to show they did their job — then immediately pull it back down and buy it.” To the distributors, Tyrone’s merchandisers were doing their jobs, to the public they just thought they were too late and missed out on the cards. No one was the wiser, except for the merchandisers and Tyrone.

“I’d meet them at the end out their route, give them a stack — normally double what they paid, and everyone was happy.” As far as he sees it, Tyrone thinks the merchandisers got the better end of the deal. They just needed to meet him and make some quick money, he had to do the leg work to move the cards on the back end, but with prices skyrocketing it was worth it.

It wasn’t long before demand outstripped Tyrone’s supply, even having most of an east coast state in his pocket. He needed to expand, and began hitting up friends and family members in other states, bringing them into the fold. Before long he had numerous states, stretching from the east coast as far Texas in his network. Everyone giving kickbacks to merchandisers, sending the product to him, and profiting as he became able to sell product online for four times their value, sometimes even more.

“I was making less, because everyone needed a cut — but who cares. I was clearing $10k a month easy.”

Flipping fat packs and sealed product was nice, but the real money came in when Tyrone started getting his hands on hobby boxes. Larger, 12 pack boxes which brought more money, and more opportunity. “I can make stupid money on a case break, you don’t even know.”

A box, or case break, is a multi-participant venture in which a large number of people essentially gamble by buying pseudo-shares in a mass opening. Let’s say someone has a case of Prizm, you might pay $500 to get randomly assigned a team, then get every card from that team opened in a case.

For the individuals participating, it was a potential gold mine. Lucking out and getting the Pelicans could mean landing a five figure Zion Williamson card, at the expense of someone who got assigned the Hawks, and coming away with nothing. Trae Young isn’t worth big money, so Atlanta is seen as a dud slot. For people like Tyrone, selling the slots represents no risk — and all upside.

“Let’s say I’m paying three grand a case. I’m turning around and making five times that it in a break.”

With everyone desperate to open product hoping of landing a chase card, Tyrone was just in it for economics. “I’ll leave the gambling to the gamblers,” he says, “sure I’ll open something now and then for fun, but nah, moving sealed is where it’s at.” Soon, not even his vast network was enough to keep him in the cards he needed.

The fever spread from basketball into everything else. First football, then baseball, and finally Pokemon. “Pokemon makes me too nervous man,” Tyrone says to a friend who suggests they start buying it up, “we don’t know shit about those. I mean, can we break it? I don’t know. I know Luka and Ja, not Squirtle and shit. I’ll stick to what I know.”

“You have no idea how dirty this all is.”

As far as Tyrone saw it, he was providing a service. It had become impossible for anyone to get sealed product without spending thousands on boxes, and he felt that private card shops were cracking everything they were getting and selling singles online. Even then, he felt a little bad about what he was doing. “It sucks man, like I remember collecting cards as a kid,” Tyrone tells me, “none of these kids have a chance at buying packs. It’s all being eaten up.” As far as he was concerned, if Tyrone wasn’t scalping cards, someone else would — so why not him?

A large impact on the card market came not from flippers like Tyrone, but from Wall Street. During the economic downturn caused by the Covid pandemic, an increasing number of investment bankers were looking to diversify their portfolios with collectibles, and basketball cards were at the top of the list. Grading services like PSA and Beckett, once tapped only by enthusiasts trying to secure their most valuable cards, were now being flooded with requests to grade from big-dollar firms, aiming to solidify their investments.

“You have no idea how dirty this all is,” a lanky man named “Tom” calls from the back room as he assembles as eBay order. “I know this goes all the way through the system. I know Wall Street is talking to Panini and they’re engineering all this. Shit, I think ESPN is in Panini’s pocket too, pushing these players they know are signing.”

“Man, you’re tripping,” Tyrone says, rolling his eyes, not buying Tom’s conspiracy theories. “Don’t listen to him, I mean shit IS dirty, he right about that — but nah, nothing like that.”

Whether you believe the wild theories floated by collectors or not, it’s unquestionable that there’s a massive card shortage and it’s pushing prices through the roof. If you want to find a rare Zion Williamson rookie card now it’ll take not a few hundred bucks, or even a few thousand — but a second mortgage on your house.

Card collectors were tracking the price spikes daily, but when word got out to the general public that there were five- and six-figure cards being pulled from packs, it started a frenzy. Go to any store that stocked cards and you’d find empty shelves, people who were never interested in cards before were lingering around the section, looking to quickly make four times their purchase in a matter of hours be reselling online.

Word of Friday stocking got out. It wasn’t long before there were lines down the sidewalk, in the middle of a pandemic, of people waiting for store doors to open to they could rush the card rack. “My people started getting scared,” Tyrone said, referring to his merchandisers. “Not like they were afraid of getting hurt or nothing. They just didn’t want the drama of pulling the shit off shelves, someone reporting them and losing their jobs.” Soon the merchandisers started to pull out of their deals, no longer interested in the risks the quick money brought. It became more and more difficult for Tyrone to secure large numbers of cards.

This is the harsh reality of the #Pokemon TCG right now. It’s a mess pic.twitter.com/3RnbeGz07A

— Pokémon News (@TrainerINTEL) May 22, 2021

Then the news came cards were being pulled from shelves. “Nobody was ready for that. Shit, I don’t think Panini or Bowman were ready for that,” Tyrone says. Overnight the network he’d cultivated for years collapsed, but this wasn’t a man who looked like his world was crumbling around him — rather, he seemed calm. “I knew it was coming, just not this way. I have plans, believe me I have plans. Just not ready to talk about that yet.”

While Tyrone pivots to whatever he’s doing next, on Friday May 21, one week after pulling cards from the shelves, Target opened them up again for online-only sales. This time with strict limits to how many packs and boxes people could buy, effectively killing the scalping market. A great day for general consumers, and perhaps the nail in the coffin for those who made a living off cards in the last few years.

When reached for comment Target corporate said they had nothing to add to the card situation beyond their initial statement posted in stores.

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deartreadmill · 7 years ago

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Gift Giving: A Rant

This is not a fitness related post, but I’ve got nowhere else to rant like this, so you get it.

Apparently 54% of people returned Xmas gifts last year, and that seemed like a startlingly high number.

Initially, I was reactive - what asshole is returning these gifts?! And then I realized me. I am that asshole. Last year, I returned $350 worth of gifts to Costco. Just Costco.

And my ire shifted.

$250 of that was items my in-laws purchased for us. Like the box set of books my mother-in-law had purchased for my daughter for the 3rd year in a row (that is NOT a joke). Or a mask and snorkel set that was $65 for a 10-year-old. Or a flimsy crappy not-hot-wheels garage and race track for my son. And various and sundry items for the kitchen that neither myself nor my husband would ever use, or already had.

Last Christmas was a bad year to become the focus of my rage. I had just lost my mother, and so understandably, emotionally, I was extraordinarily fucked up. Which made the insult of having to return gifts all the more hurtful.

Because it is fucking hurtful to me to have to return Christmas gifts.

I was raised in a family where you DID NOT return gifts. You grinned and bore it, like a good child, even if it was the weirdest, shittiest gift ever. I remember this fucking hideous ‘bumwarmer’ length sweater with matching leg warmers my gramma bought me when I was 9. It barely fit, and was FUGLY, and I wore that fucking thing until it was too small.

As a result, I grew into a very conscientious gift-giver. It took until I was a young adult to get it right, but I worked hard to know people well enough to give gifts that had meaning. Some of the best and most treasured gifts I have ever given anyone cost less than $10. So it has nothing to do with the cost associated with the gift, and everything to do with the thought behind it (true story: in my parent’s spare bedroom are two lighthouse prints I bought for my parents for Christmas one year when I couldn’t even afford groceries. They were 99 cents each, and the frames cost me an additional $6. That was nearly 20 years ago, and my mum redecorated an entire fucking room in her house around those goddamn prints.)

I put a lot of thought into gift-giving because I love giving a gift that will make someone happy. It makes me happy to give gifts that are appreciated. By contrast, I find it really hurtful when people give me a gift that has no meaning whatsoever.

My mother-in-law once gave me what I presume to me a compliment by saying “I don’t even know how you do it. Every gift you give is so thoughtful.” (Last year, I didn’t want to buy gifts. So instead, everyone got ugly christmas sweaters. I felt terrible about it!! I hadn’t put any thought into them, other than sizes and making sure they sorta matched their personalities... THEY WERE THE FUCKING HIT OF CHRISTMAS. My niece was DEVASTATED that she didn’t get one too)

Long story short - I am a great gift-giver. And you can be one too! It’s easy! Here are some tip, if you’d rather not have your gifts be part of that 54% that get returned:

Know the person you are buying for. No, I get it, secret santa situations don’t count for this one. But try to figure out the hobbies, interests, likes and dislikes of the people in your family who you are responsible for purchasing gifts for. Yes, even weird Uncle Ted.

If you don’t know someone well enough to know what kind of gift to get them, you don’t know them well enough to buy them a gift. Seriously. “But it’s my Grandma/Brother/Niece/Cousin/Boss and/or Favourite Coworker!” Yeah, I get it. But don’t buy them some weird-ass shit just because you feel you owe them a gift. Get them something generically thoughtful. Like a gift card - to the local mall, or Tim Hortons/Starbucks/David’s Tea, the new restaurant in town everyone is raving about, their favourite store. I fucking love gift cards and cannot endorse them highly enough.

Chances are, you actually do know them well enough. So weird, every time you call Gramma she’s complaining that missing coffee mug from her corelle blue onion old town set - not the teacup, mind, the coffee mug? Your niece dressed up as Raven from Teen Titans for halloween and no one knew who she was? Your boss is always sneaking off to play golf on Wednesday afternoons? Corelle Blue Onion Coffee cups (2) - $15USD on eBay. Teen Titans complete first season $10 on amazon.ca. Bag of 50 golf tees $3 on amazon.ca

Homemade gifts are always winners. Trust me. One of Mum’s coworkers would gift Mum a hideous and weird crocheted ornament every year, and even though we all thought they were hideous and weird, Mum put them on the tree every year - because in their own weird and hideous way, they were beautiful. J. had made them for my Mum because she knew Christmas was Mum’s favourite time of year, and the Christmas tree was central to that. I now have one of those ornaments, and every year I put it on the tree and think warmly about J. as we all giggle and point at the hideous thing. It’s beautifully hideous. For years my kids have given weird fucking art projects to their grandparents. Last year we didn’t. And I heard about it from my in-laws, but also my Dad. And holy shit, can we talk about those knit cotton dish cloths for a minute? Add ONE to a gift, if you know how to knit, and you will make someone’s entire Christmas. Give 4 and call it done. I fucking love receiving those things.

Memory books are a thing, yo. Honestly, Xmas has become incrementally easier since I realized all the grandparents really want is pictures of my kids. But this doesn’t just apply to doting grandparents. Did your family go somewhere amazing in the last calendar year? Did you have a camping trip that was a comedy of errors? Photo books are relatively cheap, and they are personal.

You have a smartphone, use it. Every time I come across something I think would be funny, fun, thoughtful or useful for someone, I make a note of it in my phone, along with the store it was at, and the price. If you refer back to my top two points, the reality it that you know those people well enough to buy them gifts - but Christmas is stressful and unless you are ready for the barrage of carols blaring over store speakers, bell ringers out front, eternal debate about happy holidays versus merry christmas, and really fucking rude shoppers, you’ll feel like you’ve failed and wind up with your gift returned. This leads to the next item:

“This made me think of you.” If it made you think of that person, it’s the right gift. Even if you have to explain it when they open it. My dad got me this awesome coffee mug 2 years ago at Christmas - it’s all crumpled like a balled up wad of paper, and it says something about having anger management issues. He bought it for me at work because work had been TERRIBLE that year. He was so sad when he found out I couldn’t use it at work because it wasn’t a sealed container (I crush a LOT of medication, and can’t have anything on my cart that med dust could fall into). He was so apologetic - but you know what? I didn’t care that I couldn’t use it at work because the cup reminded him of me, and made light of a situation that, with a few months distance, was comically bad. Every time I see weird outdoorsy string lights (fish, moose, lanterns, whatever), I think of my in-laws who love camping and love going hunting.

Honesty is also a thing. If you seriously can’t figure out what to buy that person, ask. This might be awkward, but it might also open up a bigger door to a cool conversation about something that brings you closer

Guinea Pigs make great gifts, or Charity gifts rock! One year, a charity sent me a gift giving catalog, and I ‘bought’ my in-laws $50 in vaccines for a 3rd world medical clinic, I ‘gave’ my brother 3 guinea pigs for a family in South America to start a guinea pig farm, and I gave my parents $50 in mosquito nets for somewhere that has malaria-bearing mosquitos. I’ve also donated to the local hospice and food bank in the name of someone. Because let’s face it - do any of us need more stuff?

Give a gift of thoughtfulness. This one I learned from my cousin. My Gramma turned 100 this summer. Instead of buying a 100-year-old who has been praying for death for the last 5 years a gift of more stuff, she gave her a gift card to a grocery store that delivers groceries.

Everyone loves bird feeders. Last, but not least, I’ve never had a single person return a bird feeder. The world needs more pretty birds at our windows to make our hearts happy.

If you already gave a bird feeder, give them seed. ‘Nuff said.

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dudence-blog · 7 years ago

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Dear Dudence for 8 March 2018

Been doing some home projects and was very proud of a nice TV shelf I built. Very proud of how it turned out and I can still count to 10! YAY! Winning. So, now we’re off to the questions and answering them for people who don’t know I’m answering them!

My father passed away last year and I’ve finished up most of the legal matters, but I have boxes and boxes of family photos. My father was born very poor, but I doubt members of the British royal family have led such documented lives. I have hundreds of photos of him at every stage of his life. I have photos of my mother—including an album and 16 mm film from her first wedding, a marriage that only lasted eight months. I have photos of my grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-great grandparents. I have school pictures, team pictures, travel pictures, holiday pictures. All these photos completely fill a large walk-in closet.

Dear Family Photos, you don’t need to sacrifice your space and time to store something you don’t want. I do think you should do what you can to preserve those items. Just because you can’t imagine who’d want to see it doesn’t mean no one in your family, or elsewhere, won’t. if you’ve got the money to spend it would probably be worth looking into a photo organizing/digitizing service. You could probably even solicit financial help from the rest of the family since it is a project aimed at the family. Get an estimate, shoot out and email saying what it’s going to cost and see if anyone would like to PayPal you some of the cash. Depending on how much you value your time and doing something else with it the several hundred to over a thousand dollars for such services might even be cheap. If you’re balking at the cost try and get some other interested family members to come over and go through the bounty. Put everything that can be identified in one pile, that which can’t in another. Apply whatever filters you want to the first pile; “We want 10 photos of Grandma and Grandpa”, “At least one photo from every house we lived in”, whatever. Let your imagination run wild. When everything is filtered take the discard pile, contact your local historical society or a heritage society and see if they’d like some of the photos (great-great-great grandparent pictures might feature background locations which have been destroyed for decades). If there is a design or art school in the area see if they could use it; old photos can be used in projects, for inspiration, whatever. Finally, just take some handfuls, post them on eBay as bulk vintage photographs and sell them. You don’t need to let your family’s history dominate your storage space, but you can fulfill your role of custodian and not let than happen.

We took in my son’s girlfriend when she was 15, after her stepfather broke her arm and her mother threw her out because she wouldn’t lie to the police to protect him. She was the daughter people pray for: kind, respectful, and smart—she graduated fourth in her class despite everything she went through. My son and her broke up in their senior year, but she continued to live with us even while our son went off to college. (She went to community college and became a pharmacy tech.) They are both 23 now. We see her regularly and consider her part of our family. My son’s current girlfriend dislikes this. She says she will not come to visit us if we continue to have her over, and guilts my son for coming alone. He skipped Christmas and Thanksgiving last year on her orders.

Dear Like a Daughter, sometimes it’s really hard not to let me mind go wild filling in missing context. Such as how much of “what my girlfriend said” have you heard from the girlfriend herself and not through your son? “How does your son feel about his ex becoming his ‘sister’ in the eyes of his family?” “Was their break-up mutual and amicable?” “Are there any sort of lingering romantic feelings from either party?” Taking everything at face value your son is probably letting his dick do a bit too much of his thinking for him. Disappointing, but understandable. It also means you probably don’t need to worry about this breaking up your family or you losing your son. He’ll be moving on. Taking this a step deeper though, let’s look at what’s going on here. Your other children have discontinued contact. You’re using some pretty hurtful language to describe your son’s disappointing but not wholly unusual actions, and I’m going to question just how welcoming you are towards his new girlfriend given you’re referring to a woman he’s been with for at least half a year as “the girl he has been sleeping with”. Finally, your foster daughter is a young woman herself, maybe she should be finding her own “boy/girl she has been sleeping with” so she’s not left with “Ex’s family” as the only people she has in her life.

My mother remarried when I was 17 to “Dan.” Dan was accused of molesting several neighborhood girls after I was 23 and married. The evidence was pretty damning: Beyond the girls’ testimony, he sent explicit photos to a 12-year-old girl and tried to get her to do the same. Dan plea bargained and served less than a year in prison. My mother stood by him during it all and even sold the house my dead father left her to pay for Dan’s legal fees. Her support of Dan broke our relationship. Our last serious conversation involved me begging her to see the evidence (the texts had just come to light), and I asked what she would have done if I had been one of those molested little girls. My mother said that wouldn’t have happened because she didn’t raise me to be a “slut.” Since then, I don’t visit and rarely call my mother. I am pregnant now, and we know it is going to be a little girl. After we posted the news on Facebook, my mother sent me a physical letter explaining that she was sorry about our “estrangement,” excited to be a grandma, and hoped this would be a new beginning for us all. I miss her so badly, and never thought I would go through this without her.

Dear Mom’s Support of a Child Molester, wow… and then there’s the letter which fills in a lot of the contect. This is not better. On principle I have a tough time condemning someone for loving who they love; emotions are weird. But I think you’ve got to make the difficult decision to cut your mom out of the loop for the time being. Maybe permanently. It’s not the “being married to a child molester” part which really squicked me out, but the part where she says the girls bore some responsibility for Dan’s actions. It would be one thing if she admitted he’d done some terrible things, but she still loves him in spite of it… he paid the price for his actions… blah blah blah. I mean, shoot, a father in Texas just successfully petitioned the governor to commute his son’s death sentence, the sentence he received for murdering his mother and brother. Your mother’s view of the victims is really the red flag here. I’d leave the option open to repair the breach in your relationship with you mom, but it’s going to have to come with her having a reckoning of just how, and why, she has supported Dan.

I attended a trivia event with some fellow “mums of young bubs” for a girls’ night out. I was having a great time until I saw some of the women cheating by Googling answers. This made me feel uncomfortable (I’m an honorable soul), but the awkwardness grew worse when at the end of the night we won the second-place prize (a bottle of wine—each!) by only two points. We cheated on more than two answers, so we definitely cheated other tables out of prizes.

Dear Trivial Trivia Concerns, if you only won by two points despite Googling it’s likely the competitors were doing so as well. That really doesn’t matter though since your issue is with the cheating itself. When you go next month tell the girls you don’t want your team to cheat. You’re enjoying the night out in and of itself and will happily supply the wine if you don’t win because you were playing fair. Heck, you’ll probably be supplying better wine than you’d get from a bar’s give-away for a trivia game. As for what to do with your ill-gotten gains: drink the fucking wine.

One of my best friends since teenage years (we’re in our mid-30s now) has consistently made terrible dating choices: abusive men, drug addicts, just plain jerks, you name it. She is a great single mother to a wonderful 6-year-old, and got back together six-ish months ago with “Jake,” a guy she briefly dated a few years ago. She recently moved in with him, and while he seems nice enough, even she admits he is not the sharpest tool in the shed and doesn’t have a lot of personality or interests. In fact, this is why she broke up with him in the first place. When I expressed surprise that they were back together, she made a comment about how she was just ready to “settle” because she was tired of being single.

Dear Best Friend Troubles, this is an AB issue and you should C your way out of it. Do you know why your friend thinks Jake is dull without a lot of personality and interests? It’s because he’s not an abusive, drug addicted jerk. After a decade or so of filling her life with shocking levels of drama she is with someone who does not bring the noise. As a metaphor, just because a habanero pepper isn’t as hot as a ghost pepper, doesn’t mean the habanero isn’t also hot. Jake most likely is plenty interesting as “Jake”, he just appears uninteresting because his interests don’t include a series of unfortunate events which inexorably lead to a visit from the police. Honestly, that you’re proudly stating how your friend views you as a font of relationship advice, and your advice has led her to a string of soul-destroying horrors, you might want to rethink the little voice in your head telling you that you’re not sure if you should be encouraging her relationship with nice, personable Jake. Let me be blunt, you need to see something shocking to the senses if you come away from your visit to your wrong-side-of-thirty single-mom-with-a-history-of-abusive-relationships friend saying anything to her but your best wishes for their happy future together.

I am 34, with a Ph.D. and a successful, happy life. I am regularly mistaken for being much younger—often a college student. (I live in a city with many colleges, which probably doesn’t help.) Though I’ll be “thankful for this someday,” according to many well-meaning but semi-irritating strangers, I have struggled for years to think of an appropriate response to people’s surprise upon learning my actual age. For a bartender or checkout clerk, a smile and nod tends to be OK. (I’ve also tried, “Yeah, I get that a lot and I never quite know what to say,” but that never seems to help.) In a professional environment, things feel a bit weightier, as I don’t want people to assume my experience and skill set is below where I actually am.

Dear Not as Young as You Think, the appropriate response is “Yeah, I get that a lot,” which you already know. And it is going to continue to be annoying for you until the inevitability of time consumes your youthful appearance. Hopefully it is more gradual for you than it was for Dorian Gray. And involves less murder. What I do wonder about is your professional situation. Since your phd isn’t assumed is it something which isn’t expected in your field? It is entirely possible that “you are much earlier in your career” compared to peers only a couple years older than you, despite you being very educated and credentialed. They spent the years you were in school working.

I’m a 23-year-old woman and have been dating my girlfriend for just over eight months. I’m over the moon about it, we’re happy together, and we communicate well. Here’s the thing: She’s a bit high-strung and tends to react to small issues in life with tears. We’ve spoken about it and she has reassured me that it’s not a big deal, and that when she cries it doesn’t necessarily mean that anything terrible is happening. I really struggle with this. I grew up in a household with a lot of abuse, both physical and verbal, directed at everyone. My self-appointed role as keeper of the peace meant that I spent my entire childhood on the lookout for subtle signs of distress in everyone so that I could try and mitigate it. Someone crying sets off all of my alarm bells for “something I have to fix,” and it is very hard for me not to overreact to her tears.

Dear Not a Big Deal When She Cries, you know, I’m going to go ahead and say that the high-strung person in a relationship isn’t the one with the hair-trigger tears but the one who is a self-appointed relationship peacekeeper from the abusive household who is struggling to adapt to someone else’s emotions. It is entirely possible this is just an issue which the two of you are incompatible. When you’re still in the euphoric happy banging stage of a relationship and you’re finding yourself emotionally drained and internally annoyed by her innocent behavior that is not a strong indicator for future happiness. You should totally check into some options to help you deal with your issues from growing up, but it might not be much help for this current girlfriend. Maybe you could try and find the girl from the “Like a Daughter” and see if she’s into some sapphic delights. She’s got no one in her life and might be wasting her time pining for an ex who has moved on. Give it a go!

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janegilmore · 4 years ago

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New Post: https://janegilmore.com/extract-why-we-shouldnt-ask-why-she-doesnt-leave/

Extract: Why we shouldn't ask why she doesn't leave

This is an extract from my book Fixed It: Violence and the representation of women in the media, which you can buy from Readings, Booktopia, Amazon, Audible or the local bookstore of your choice (choose local if you can).

This extract is from a section talking about the influence media has on how people think about men’s violence against women and the danger this can present to women who want to escape a violence partner.

Leaving a relationship that isn’t abusive is difficult, heartbreaking and exhausting. Imagine how much worse it can be when you’re also trying to unlearn years of grooming that taught you to have no faith in yourself and a lifetime of the world reinforcing to everyone around you that women are responsible for men’s violence, lie about men’s violence and should be the only ones to suffer the consequences of men’s violence.

Chapter 8 – Victims, perpetrators and the people who support them

It is dangerous for women who have experienced violence from men to live in communities where people might blame them for the violence someone else chose to enact against them. Crisis and support services need funding and government support to offer effective help to the hundreds of thousands of women who need it. They need to connect to police and courts, banks and welfare agencies, doctors and mental health workers, schools and work, housing and utility services, and they need to know those institutions will support them. An Australian woman told me her story of trying to escape her abusive husband and it’s a sadly typical example of the dangers and barriers women face when they try to leave violent men.

Jenny* tried to leave her abusive husband, Andrew*, four times before she was finally able to escape. The first time she tried to leave was in the 1990s. Services for women in violent families were much more difficult to find, and she found her attempts blocked by basic logistical obstacles. Because she was still married, she quite simply could not get a lease, electricity supply, medical care, new schools for her kids or bank accounts in her own name without risking him finding her address. The organisations either required a co-signature from her then husband or would make her new address available to him.

I was like a rat in a maze. Every time I ran down another alley I’d hit a wall. When we were married he’d always insisted on putting everything in his name – lease, bills, bank accounts, cars, insurance, everything. At first I didn’t realise that it mattered and later I was too scared of him to do anything about it. So the first time I tried to leave I had no rental record, no credit, no money of my own and whenever I tried to get anything they’d either want to check with him to verify my identity or they’d want to put things in both our names. Schools wouldn’t take the kids without both of us filling in the forms, even though I had police reports and had started divorce papers. Landlords wanted references and they’d tell me they ‘couldn’t promise’ that he wouldn’t find out about the application. If I told them I was in danger from him I wouldn’t get a lease. I could see it on their faces: I was ‘trouble’. If I didn’t tell them they’d ring him for a goddamn reference. It was unbelievable. I had a job but when I tried to buy a car they wouldn’t give me finance without his signature because we were still married. I paid the extra fee to get a silent phone number but one of the times we moved out he got our address from the electricity company. Another time it was through the husband of one of my friends. That bloke had always believed Andrew when he told people I was treating him badly and going to take the kids off him, so he felt sorry for him and said he was just trying to help him out. Every time I went back to Andrew it would all start again but he kept promising he wouldn’t hurt me again and he’d get so angry when I said no. It sounds crazy but I felt like I’d be safer if I moved back in with him and kept him happy than if I stayed where I was when he was so furious and could turn up any time he liked.

Over time, as services for women fleeing violence slowly improved, Jenny was finally able to escape. With the help of police, intervention orders and one of the very few domestic violence support services avail- able at the time, she got a lease and moved to a new home with her children. Both Jenny and the police believed she had done everything she needed to do to make sure Andrew couldn’t find her new address. They were wrong. Police are still not sure exactly how he found out where she was living. He won’t say but Jenny thinks it’s possible he simply followed her home from work.

He tried it lots of times. I’d see his car across the street or catch it in my rear-view mirror. Every time I saw him, I’d drive straight to the police station. Sometimes they’d be great; sometimes they’d carry on like I was just a pain in the arse. It all depended on who was on the counter when I got there. Maybe he borrowed someone else’s car one night ‘cause I was always really careful. I never ever stopped watching for him.

Despite multiple breaches of intervention orders, like waiting out- side her work and following her home, ringing her and threatening to kill her, telling their children she was a manipulative bitch who didn’t really love them, that she was just doing things for them to make him look bad, and stalking her when she went out with friends, Andrew was never imprisoned. He had multiple court appearances that ended in fines, intervention orders, good behaviour bonds, suspended sentences and stern warnings. This went on for nearly a year until one night he came to Jenny’s home with a knife, kicked in her door and tried to kill her. One of her children, then only twelve years old, was quick enough to hide under furniture with a phone, call the police and stay on the phone so they could hear Jenny scream as she was being cut. Jenny had deliberately chosen a house close to a police station, a decision that probably saved her life that night because two carloads of police arrived in time to stop him before he killed her. Jenny was hospitalised with multiple stab wounds and Andrew was charged, convicted and imprisoned for attempted murder. The child who hid in the house that night, listening to his mother being stabbed, remains deeply traumatised.

Andrew is due for release soon, so Jenny has changed jobs and left everyone at her old workplace with a detailed description of him and how to respond if he turns up. She calls it her ‘death-cheat-sheet’. It’s a document she’s assembled with photos of him and all the history, convictions and current court orders, as well as police contact details for anyone who hears from him. She’s handed the death-cheat-sheet to all the people he might contact if he tries to find her or her children again. So far this has included: her children’s schools and workplaces, parents of children’s schoolfriends, her eldest child’s partner, their parents and sib- lings, local police, family violence services, banks, utilities, her landlord, the bond agency, doctors, sporting clubs, social media, friends, family and extended networks, dentists, road toll organisations, Centrelink, eBay, the electoral roll, the tax office, superannuation accounts, lawyers, loyalty card companies, the car registration organisation, the local council and the local vet. She’s not sure if she’s covered every option and she knows there is a huge number of people who all have to be constantly vigilant about his manipulations and detailed knowledge of her life and habits.

If any one person at any of those places slips up, even once, and he is able to find her, she firmly believes he will kill her.

It’s a lot better these days but you still get people, you know, rolling their eyes and thinking I’m making a big drama of it all. Or they think I’m just being a bitch and not letting him see his kids. That’s why I did the death-cheat-sheet. Seeing the attempted murder conviction in black and white makes a difference, even to the blokes who feel a bit sorry for him because they think, ‘Oh, poor bugger, he just wants to see his kids.’ The big organisations, they all have those privacy regulations, but he knows my date of birth and all kinds of other details and he has the marriage certificate. Most people aren’t going to check whether a husband has tried to kill his wife if he pretends he’s just trying to pay her phone bill or something like that. He’s smart – that’s what scares me.

It should be unlikely he’d be able to fool any of the large organisations now: they almost all have accounts for people like Jenny flagged to prevent exactly the situation that scares her. But she is one persuasive conversation, one person who believes women lie about domestic violence, one sympathetic interaction away from someone giving her address to the man who abused her, stalked her and eventually tried to kill her. He’s got a four out of ten chance of finding her, according to the National Community Attitudes Survey. Damn right she should be scared.

* Jenny and Andrew’s names and some identifying details have been changed to protect her life and the lives of her children.

—

If you want to read more, you can buy Fixed It: Violence and the representation of women in the media from Readings, Booktopia, Amazon, Audible or the local bookstore of your choice (choose local if you can).

##FixedIt

#FixedIt

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darcyfarber · 5 years ago

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The Best of the Best Proven Side Hustles You Should Know About

Need to make a little (or a lot) of extra money this month?

Side hustles are an incredible way to boost your monthly income. Whether you want to stay home and make money from home, get out of the house to make money, or try something unique and fun – I have you covered.

This list is updated weekly and if there is anything you think I need to take out or add to the list, please let me know in the comments below the post.

Also, if you do find something and you’re having a lot of success with it, you’d be helping everyone out by sharing your win in the comments below. Thanks so much and enjoy the guide to making more money each month.

Table of Contents

My First Picks...

1. Share Your Opinion

2. Door Dash

3. VIPKID

4. Airbnb

5. Share Your Blog with the World

6. Become a Virtual Assistant

Online Hustles

7. Start a Social Media Marketing Business

8. Ebates (Now Rakuten)

9. Honey Browser Extension

10. Inbox Dollars

11. Fiverr

12. Make Money with PayPal

13. Amazon

14. Amazon Affiliate Links

15. eBook Publishing

16. Etsy

17. Craigslist

18. User Testing

19. Become a Freelance Writer

20. Zazzle

21. eBay

22. Do Transcription Work or Data Entry Work

23. Sell Your Photos Online

24. Start a Web Design Business

Driving Hustles

25. Uber/Lyft Driver-Partner

26. Uber Eats

27. Be a Paid Designated Driver

28. Drive People to the Airport

Extremely Passive Hustles

29. Rent Out Your Garage or Driveway

30. Become a Voiceover Artist

31. Rent out your Car

32. Rent out a Room full-time

Some Skill Required Hustles

33. Become an Online Coach

34. Create an Online Course

35. Spray Tanning

36. Become a Cover Letter/Resume’ Writer

37. Develop an App

38. Catering

39. Computer Repair

40. Computer Training

41. Guitar Gigs

42. Guitar Lessons

43. Handyman Work

44. Lifeguard

45. Mobile Oil Change

46. Network Marketing

47. Personal Training

48. Tutoring

49. Teach Music Lessons

50. Start a Baking Business

51. Become a Sports Umpire

Physical Labor Hustles

52. Clean Pools

53. House Cleaning

54. Mowing Lawns

55. Painting Gates

56. Painting Services

57. Shoveling Snow

58. Wash Cars

59. Wash Windows

Unique Hustles

60. Rent out Your Baby Gear

61. Sell Your Hair Online

62. Paint Street Numbers

63. Sell Drinks

64. TaskRabbit

65. Start a Home Staging Business

66. Be a Work-From-Home Customer Service Rep

67. Start an Estate Sale Service Business

68. Start a Vending Machine Business

69. Pick Up Trash in Parking Lots

You’ve Got to be Kidding Me Hustles

70. Be a Sperm Donor

71. Be a Plasma Donor

72. Become a Cuddler

73. Pick up Dog Poop

74. Rent-a-Friend

Easy Peasy Hustles

75. Babysitting

76. Dog Walking

77. Gig Walking

78. Golf Course

79. House-sitting

80. Mystery Shopper

81. Pet Grooming

82. Pet Sitting

83. RedBox

84. Sell ScrapMetal

85. Tax Prep

86. Sign Spinner

87. Sign Holder

Final Takeaway

My First Picks…

These first five are favorites because they are quick ways to get started making extra money and they have long-term potential as well! All five of them do require an internet connection, but sine you’re reading this from the internet, I think you’re covered there ?

1. Share Your Opinion

and get money sent to your PayPal

Yup, you can actually generate side income by simply giving your opinion via online surveys. It’s not going to make you rich tomorrow, but it’s still a great way to generate extra income during your down time.

If you think surveys may be the way to go, check out our full list of the top survey companies for both online and offline opinions here.

Survey Junkie

2. Door Dash

Door Dash is our favorite pick for food delivery because it’s been reported back to us that DoorDashers make slightly more than UberEats drivers. While we don’t have any factual statistics to prove this right or wrong, we still pick DoorDash over UberEats as our top side hustle for food delivery. If you have a car, bike, or scooter, get started with Door Dash today and start making money for your next vacation, your upcoming wedding, or whatever expense you’re saving for!

Maybe you just don’t feel like driving people around in your car or maybe you don’t even have a car. Depending on the city you live in, Uber Eats allows you to deliver food to people via your car, bike, or scooter. Turn on the app in the morning before work, when you get home, or whenever you have some extra time to make money on your terms.

Door Dash

3. VIPKID

VIPKID will pay you up to $22/hour to teach English from the comfort of your home to children in China. Currently VIPKID has over 70,000 teachers teaching English as a second language to over 600,000 children in China.

They do require you to have a Bachelor’s degree from either the USA or Canada and they ask for “some teaching experience”. However, from the teachers we have spoke with from VIPKID, they said “teaching” doesn’t have to mean teaching in a traditional educational setting.

The lessons are 30 minutes long and you will be paid up to $11 for each 30-minute lesson. One thing to note is since you are teaching across the globe in a live setting, you will be teaching at odd hours (late at night or first thing in the morning). However, the teachers we spoke to said it was fun, rewarding, and it paid well for being able to stay at home and teach from their laptops.

VIPKID

4. Airbnb

Did you know you can rent your room or house out at Airbnb? They have been around since 2008 and millions of people have been renting out their rooms or entire homes to travelers from all over the world. If you do this right, you may be able to cover your entire mortgage! If you’re going to be gone for a month or two, you may as well allow your space to make money while you’re gone.

Airbnb

5. Share Your Blog with the World

I started this blog in 2015 from my laptop at my kitchen table and today it generates over $10,000 per month 🙂 However, in the beginning it was just a side hustle project that turned into full-time income much quicker than I would have ever dreamed.

If you love writing, then starting a blog is exactly the right side hustle for you. There are many ways to generate income from blogging, with one of the most popular being through affiliate income.

How does it work?

You know how you can share a referral link from companies you love and they will send you $5 for referring them a customer? Affiliate partners work the exact same way.

Is blogging complicated?

Absolutely not! But just in case, I did create a step-by-step guide to help you get started in about 15 minutes.

Start a Blog

6. Become a Virtual Assistant

If you enjoy working from your laptop, then becoming a virtual assistant may be exactly what you need. We use a few virtual assistants for Money Peach and one of them earns over $10,000 per month as a VA. Other places where you can become a virtual assistant for an agency where they find work for your is Upwork. They take a 10% fee, but 90% is still a great side hustle.

You can also listen to Episode 80 on the Money Peach Podcast (below) where my own Virtual Assistant shares how she got started as a VA and within a few years was able to quit her full-time job and start earning over $10k per month doing what she loved.

Virtual Assistant Course (Use Promo Code Peach 10 for $50 Off)

Online Hustles

I love online hustles because they give you the freedom to do these anywhere. If you’re constantly traveling for work or out of town a lot you’re going to absolutely love these online side hustles.

7. Start a Social Media Marketing Business

Our very own social media manager was actually someone who was enrolled inside Awesome Money Course. We noticed how great she was inside our private students-only Facebook group and we offered her a job with us. Now she manages all of our social media for Money Peach and she has also been offered social media jobs from other bloggers!

A great place to get started is visiting the Facebook Side Hustle Course by Bobby of Millennial Money Man. You can read how many of the students from the course are landing social media jobs for $1,000 – $2,000 month! Not a bad little side hustle, right?

Facebook Side Hustle

8. Ebates (Now Rakuten)

Ebates is a company that has partnered with over 2,000 online companies to form an affiliate relationship with each of them. An affiliate relationship simply means Ebates and each online company have created a partnership where Ebates will refer you or I to buy something from them, and that company then sends Ebates a thank-you referral.

The good news: Ebates then splits the thank-you referral with you, and you earn Cash Back.

The Better News: You can Make Money by referring friends, family, or anyone else to join Ebates!

Ebates extends their referral program to any Ebates member who would like to share how to earn Cash Back while shopping online. Once you create an account with Ebates, you can invite your friends and family to join in on the Cash Back savings, and YOU will also receive a thank-you referral, aka make money.

BONUS $10 with Ebates Right Now

9. Honey Browser Extension

Honey is a free tool that will search for online coupons and apply them to your online shopping cart to make sure you are saving the most money. Instead of searching for coupons one at-a-time and applying them individually, Honey does all of this for you in the matter of seconds. Not only will you save money, but you will also MAKE MONEY with their refer-a-friend program. For anyone you refer to the app, Honey will send you $5 as soon as they purchase something via the app up to $1,000.

Honey Browser Extension

10. Inbox Dollars

Inbox Dollars is a rewards club that pays you in cash for completing a variety of online activities. This can include searching the internet, filling out surveys, printing off coupons, and shopping online. If you are already doing these things, you may as well get paid for it, right?

Inbox Dollars

11. Fiverr

Fiverr is a platform where you can sell your products and services starting at $5 per gig. After you have a few $5 gigs under your belt, you can start increasing how much you charge. Here at Money Peach, we hire people from Fiverr all the time. Just recently, we found someone for a quick logo design and another to transcribe some videos we created.

Also, the Fiverr platform does take 20% from each gig. Therefore, if you do a $5 gig, you will take home $4 per gig. However, if you can complete 3-4 gigs in an hour, your hourly rate could start at $16 – $20 per hour!

Fiverr

12. Make Money with PayPal

Already have a PayPal account?

We have put together a list of the side hustles that will pay you in PayPal gift cards which can then be deposited into your PayPal account – just like cash!

Where to make money with PayPal

13. Amazon

Selling on Amazon is almost identical as selling on eBay in terms of fees and ease of use. However, sometimes items that don’t sell as well on eBay do better on Amazon and vice versa. Either way, it is a side hustle worth looking at if you can buy for cheap and resell for a higher price.

14. Amazon Affiliate Links

I know of a guy who started out as a handyman. He then took that idea as a handyman and started his own blog to teach people how to fix things themselves through blogging and video tutorial. At the end of every post or video, he would tell you what tool he used to get the job done and would provide a link directly to Amazon for you to purchase that product.

However, he also signed up for a free Amazon Affiliate Account. Every time someone clicks on his link and buys ANYTHING on Amazon, he gets a commission! Think about this: Amazon pays him for the tool he recommended and also for anything else they Add To Cart. This is why I love blogging and why I have a free tutorial to help you get started.

15. eBook Publishing

Make money by writing your own book and self publishing it on Amazon for free. There are different options available for how your can price your book and earn income from the sale of your book in the Amazon store. Questions about self publishing your own book? Check this out.

16. Etsy

Instead of having to open up your brick and mortar store, sell your creations on Etsy. Whether you make clothing, crafts, baby toys, or jewelry, you can open up your own store at Etsy. I have a friend selling her awesome clothing line on Etsy and it brings in a very nice income for the family. This is another great side hustle, but don’t expect instant results. You may need to be patient for this one.

17. Craigslist

We all know you can buy and sell stuff on Craigslist, but have you ever thought about offering a service you can provide. If providing a service isn’t your thing, you can scan Craigslist for great deals and then later resell items for a profit. This takes persistence and patience, but I have a friend who went from a $4k truck to a $24k in truck in 18 months by flipping cars from Craigslist.

There are also many other sites competing with Craigslist and you may have better exposure by posting on these sites like Craigslist.

18. User Testing

Don’t want to do an online survey, but still like to surf the web and earn some cash? Companies will pay you to try out their apps or visit their websites and give them feedback. Usertesting and UserFeel uses your feedback on apps and websites that aren’t as user-friendly and then pays your for it.

19. Become a Freelance Writer

If you are a good writer, consider searching online sites such as freelancer.com for writing jobs. Individuals or companies might need freelance writers for a number of reasons.

Individuals or companies might need a writer for their blog or website, or a company might need a writer for its instruction manuals, for instance.

Pro Tip: The best way to learn how to get freelance writing jobs is from someone who has been doing it for years. Holly Johnson generates over $100k per year freelance writing and she has a program to show you how to do it.

**Money Peach Readers: Use Coupon Code PEACH10 to Receive 10% Off at Checkout**

Become Freelance Writer

An even better option is to learn from those who are already making 6-figures as freelance writers. Check out Episode 13 on the Money Peach Podcast where Holly and Greg Johnson share how they got started as freelance writers and soon turned their side hustle into a 6-figure income.

20. Zazzle

Make money on Zazzle as a designer by selling your artwork on different products or you can actually make and manufacture the products for sale. I have a friend who takes old dry wood and paints slogans on them. She needs to sell them on Zazzle; she could create a very quick and profitable side hustle.

21. eBay

You can have your own store up in only a few minutes at eBay. To start, you must have a seller account, must be verified through PayPal. You are even able to give a detailed description of your store with a catchy design to attract customers. I have a friend who will buy all of the unused bras at a last chance type of store and resell them for a profit at her eBay store. Last I heard, she was doing $1,000/month in her first couple of months.

22. Do Transcription Work or Data Entry Work

Companies hire transcriptionists for a number of reasons. A doctor’s office might need a medical transcriptionist to record information about a patient’s appointment, or law enforcement agencies might need transcription services for court cases or suspect interviews.

Data entry work, which is a bit easier than transcription work, is also available from companies who hire people to work from home. Simply google “transcription work” or “data entry jobs” for a list of companies currently hiring work-from-home reps.

23. Sell Your Photos Online

Do you take amazing photos? You can actually sell your photos online at places like iStockPhoto, Shutterstock, Fotolia, and Bigstockphoto. Photos can be sold over and over again, allowing you to earn a residual income!

24. Start a Web Design Business

If you’re knowledgeable about web design, you could make money creating or improving on websites for individuals or businesses.

Advertise on Craigslist or approach businesses directly if they have a website that needs improvement.

There really is no shortage of ways to make extra money if you’re willing to get creative and do some research. Which financial goals will you use the extra cash you earn to accomplish?

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Driving Hustles

If you have a car, you may as well use it to help you side hustle, right? Here’s our favorite driving side hustles.

25. Uber/Lyft Driver-Partner

If you are unfamiliar with Uber or Lyft, then make sure you still have a pulse and you are breathing air.

To get started, some minimum requirements you need are a car, a smartphone, and the Uber or Lyft app. You become available to drive as soon as you complete the activation process and then you are ready to start earning money. Fares are paid out weekly or up to 5X a day when you register for Instant Pay with your debit card!

Today, there are more riders on the road than ever! This is one of my absolute favorite ways to start generating money quickly.

Drive with Uber

Drive with Lyft

26. Uber Eats

Uber Eats

27. Be a Paid Designated Driver

Pretty self-explanatory.

28. Drive People to the Airport

Some airports don’t allow Uber or Lyft to drop people off or pick them up, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still offer up airport rides on your own. Post an ad to all of your friends on social media that you are now their preferred method of getting to the airport. I used to do this when I first got my license and it paid very well 🙂

OR JUST DRIVE WITH UBER OR LYFT (See Number 24 Above)

Extremely Passive Hustles

If you like passive income, then you may want to review the top 40 passive income ideas . But to get you started, here are our favorite side hustles that are also extremely passive.

29. Rent Out Your Garage or Driveway

You’ve likely heard of AirBnB, where you can rent out rooms in your house – or your whole house – to travelers wanting to avoid the impersonal feel and high cost of hotel rooms.

Maybe you can’t or don’t want to rent out rooms in your house, but you might have space in your garage to rent out. Sites such as Air Garage help people rent out their garage spaces and driveway spaces.

People might want to rent out your garage or driveway space because they work close to where you live and want cheaper and safer parking options.

Or they might want to rent out your parking space because there’s an event near you, such as a state fair or sporting event.

Depending on where you live you could easily earn $50 or more a month for parking spots in your garage or driveway.

Check out this Money Peach podcast with AirGarage CEO Jonathan Barkl for more info.

30. Become a Voiceover Artist

You know those people who talk on radio and TV commercials but you never see their faces? They’re called voiceover artists, and they get paid good money to do what they do.

Sites like Backstage list available voiceover jobs, and Carrie Olsen, professional voiceover artist, has a great web site that can help you learn how to become a voiceover artist.

Check out this Money Peach Podcast with Voice Over Star Carrie Olsen for more info.

31. Rent out your Car

Did you know your car sits idle 93% of the time? If you’re not going to need your car for the next couple of days/weeks/months, you may as well let it earn you some cash. You can list your car through RelayRides and have your personal car rented out tomorrow.

32. Rent out a Room full-time

Own a home and need extra cash each month? Rent out a room in your house to help cover the mortgage and free up some of your cash. I have a single friend who has a $1,200 mortgage and he consistently earns $2,000+ every month by renting out room(s) in his house via Airbnb. Fun fact – he applies the extra cash towards his mortgage each month!

Airbnb

Some Skill Required Hustles

So, not all side hustles are for everyone. In fact, these ones below do require some skill to make money. But, the more skill you have, the more money you will make!

33. Become an Online Coach

If you have an idea and can help people, pay attention. Whether it is motivating someone, helping them pass a class, or teaching them how to build a website, this can all be done online. Setup you’re pricing, terms, and accept payment through something as simple as PayPal and you are on your way. I recommend using Skype or Google Hangouts since it is 100% free. Help someone and get paid – genius.

34. Create an Online Course

Is there something you are good at and can teach to others? I have a friend who will teach you how to clean pools over his site, Swim University. Check out Udemy for ideas on your next online course and see how much people are paying for someone like you to teach them.

One of the greatest accomplishments I have had in my business is helping others reach financial freedom. We have had over 500 students graduate Awesome Money Course and completely turn their money situation around!

If you are tired of living the paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and would like to save more, pay off debt, and reach true financial freedom, then Awesome Money Course was made for you.

I am so confident you will absolutely love the program that I have 100% money-back guarantee…meaning you could download the entire course, keep it, and ask for a refund.

I hope no one would do that, but I will also take that risk if it results in you learning how to manage money, pay off debt, save, and build a wealthy future.

However, if you would like to try a little bit of our program out, we do have a 100% free mini-course called the Cash Flow Formula which will show you the step-by-step to building a monthly cash-flow plan with many of our favorite money-hacks to save more and pay off debt quicker!

Start Cash Flow Formula (FREE)

35. Spray Tanning

A good friend of mine (Jessica) has become the queen of spray tanning in our area. In fact, she is making $900 per week cash spray tanning both the ladies and the men and it’s all through word-of-mouth! You can check her out at JC Glows on Facebook to see how she set up her side hustle.

I asked her how she got started and she said this:

She started with this exact tanning kit

She uses this tanning tent

She taught herself how watching YouTube

36. Become a Cover Letter/Resume’ Writer

Professionals of all kinds pay ridiculous amounts of money for professionally written resumes. I know one guy who paid a professional resume’ writer $5,000.

If you have a knack for writing compelling and attention-grabbing resumes, consider offering your services on sites such as freelancer.com or Craigslist.

37. Develop an App

If you’ve got a great idea for an app that will make people’s lives easier or more exciting, this could be a great side hustle for you.

Check out this post on learnappmaking.com for more information on how to develop and market an app for some extra income.

38. Catering

If you love cooking, serving food, and entertaining at your own home, then get paid to do it for someone else. This can be fun and can often go from side hustle to full-time if you’re really good at it!

39. Computer Repair

If you love “playing” computers, then help someone repair theirs and get paid for it. Note: You must know a little bit about computers 🙂

40. Computer Training

How many Baby Boomers (or anyone for that matter) do you know who are still having trouble checking their email. If you were able to navigate to this web page, then you probably have the skills to teach extremely basic computer skills to an extreme beginner.

41. Guitar Gigs

A friend of mine finds guitar gigs online, on Facebook, and in the paper all the time. He shows up, plays for a few hours, and leaves with cash in hand. Note: you must be good at playing the guitar.

42. Guitar Lessons

If you are handy on the 6 string and can show someone else, teach them. Better yet, teach the world online how to play guitar.

43. Handyman Work

Some people are handy and others are not. Let your neighbors know that you are available to hang a ceiling fan, patch a hole in the drywall, fix an irrigation leak, or paint a fence. All can be done for them ASAP for a small fee 🙂

I love TaskRabbit. Whether I need a doggy door installed, someone to clean my house this weekend, or even mount a TV, I can go on TaskRabbit to find someone in an instant. YOU could be that person I find next on TaskRabbit for hire!

44. Lifeguard

Become a lifeguard and earn $16/hr – $20/hr part-time. Not only do you make some extra cash, but you are guaranteed to get a little tan as well.

45. Mobile Oil Change

If you don’t mind getting underneath the car and pulling the drain plug for people, then this could be your next side hustle. People are busy, and may want to pay you to change their oil while they are at work. Note: Wal-Mart always has the cheapest oil.

46. Network Marketing

Network marketing (sometimes referred to as multi-level-marketing) can sometimes have a bad connotation if you have ever been scammed in the past. However, there are very reputable companies out there that you can start working for today with very little buy-in or overhead. A member of our family started off her network marketing business as a side hustle and has turned it into a part-time gig with full-time income. Warning: if you are told it doesn’t require any actual work – run away!

47. Personal Training

Someone out there wants to get into better shape, and they are willing to pay you to help them. If you love fitness, this would be a perfect side hustle for you.

48. Tutoring

Take your education and use it to make money on the side. Tutor students and get paid handsomely.

Live in the U.S. or U.K. and hold a bachelor’s degree? You can earn up to $20/hr plus bonuses to teach kids English online from the comfort of home. Learn more here.

49. Teach Music Lessons

From singing to playing piano or any other number of instruments, parents everywhere are seeking music lessons for their kids.

If you have a gift for a musical skills, consider teaching that skill to local kids. You might be able to find jobs by looking on Craigslist or by seeking out local public school or homeschooling groups to connect with parents who have school-aged children.

50. Start a Baking Business

Do you have a gift for baking goodies such as cake, muffins or cookies? Why not use that gift to make yourself some extra cash?

Events such as birthday parties, weddings, office parties and meetings, retirement parties and more often have baked treats as a part of their celebration.

Advertise your culinary skills on Craigslist and with local event booking venues for your bakery services.

Be sure to check with state officials on what the rules are for serving and selling food in your area first.

51. Become a Sports Umpire

Are you knowledgeable about the rules and regulations of certain sports? Do you like working with kids? Recreation associations often pay good money for organized sports umpires for football, baseball, and more.

In our area, umpires earn about $30 an hour. Check with local sporting organizations for job opening details.

Physical Labor Hustles

If you don’t putting in a little sweat equity, you can do very well side hustling with some physical labor attached to it. I did #50 when I was getting out of debt and generated over $1,000 each month.

52. Clean Pools

This requires very little overhead and is simple to do. Go to Google Earth and look up which homes in your neighborhood have a pool, and offer to start today. I actually did this to get out of debt and it worked out great!

53. House Cleaning

People are busy and don’t have time to clean their homes. This is where you come in 🙂 Search your area in Craigslist to get an idea for pricing your own services.

54. Mowing Lawns

If you don’t have the funds to purchase all the equipment, then offer to your mow lawns with their equipment. I actually did this in grade school because I wasn’t old enough to drive. I just showed up, grabbed their lawnmower, and was paid.

55. Painting Gates

Gates fade and someone needs to repaint them. A kid in the neighborhood took pics of faded gates and pretty gates and posted them on the mailbox with his number and price. (I think one of the faded gate pics he took was my gate also).

56. Painting Services

Remember that movie American Pie 2 where they spend the summer in a lake house and do some side painting. No one likes painting their houses or walls, so why not help them out for a little side cash? Start out small by offering to paint a bedroom or two, and work your way up from there. Pricing rule: $1 per square ft of painting.

57. Shoveling Snow

No one likes shoveling snow and this is why you will be paid for it.

58. Wash Cars

If you can wash a car, then you can make money. People are busy and don’t have time to even take their cars to the wash anymore…this is where you come in.

59. Wash Windows

I recently paid a guy to wash my windows because he advertised $4/window. He spent about 1 hour washing a total of 20 windows and walked away with $80 cash. His entire setup was a bucket and a squeegee. Maybe I should wash my own windows and my neighbor’s windows for an affordable price of only $4 a window.

Unique Hustles

If you are unique, then you deserve some unique side hustles. Some of these are extremely cool, but a few of them…well I am still waiting for you to try.

60. Rent out Your Baby Gear

Think of it as the Airbnb of Baby Gear.

Have you ever traveled with kids and realized what a pain-in-the-butt it is to take the stroller, hi-chair, pack-n-play, and everything else that babies need? Think about dragging all of that through the airport, onto the train, or inside the Uber?

BabyQuip offers a simple solution. They provide families with a wide assortment of clean, quality baby equipment—everything they need to keep their little ones sleeping well at night and happily engaged during the day.

And guess who makes 80% commission (plus tips) renting their baby gear out?

You, the side hustler!

BabyQuip

61. Sell Your Hair Online

Thinking about a new hair style? You may want to. People are paying up to $1,000 for quality hair if you can remember to wash it more than once a month J Check out what your hair is worth at Hairsellon.

Hairsellon

62. Paint Street Numbers

A father and son rang my doorbell and pointed out to me my street numbers were faded. “For only $10, they would repaint my street numbers so my house would look better”. I paid it and it took them 37 seconds. They did 6 houses on my street alone. This is a great little side hustle.

63. Sell Drinks

where it’s hot (and where it’s cold)

I live in Phoenix where it will hover at 116°F during the summer. During the hottest weeks, there is a guy who sells snow cones and water for a premium.

I asked him how business was recently – he smiled and said “Business is gooooooood”. Buy a case of water at Costco for $0.12 a bottle and resell them for $2 wherever it is HOT. Who wouldn’t pay $2 for ice-cold water during the dog days of summer?

64. TaskRabbit

Become a task rabbit and get paid. People in your neighborhood are looking to pay you to put together furniture from Ikea, do their grocery shopping, install a ceiling fan, be a bartender at their party, or mount their TV to the wall.

65. Start a Home Staging Business

Somebody is always selling a home, and homes sell faster and for more money when they are “staged”.

As a home stager you can tailor your business to meet a variety of client needs. Creating relationships with local realtors is one way to help you find home staging clients.

66. Be a Work-From-Home Customer Service Rep

There are many legit companies that offer to hire customer service representatives who can from home. One of the more popular work-from-home companies is U-Haul, the well-known moving company.

67. Start an Estate Sale Service Business

An estate sale business buys a large majority of a client’s belongings, including furniture, vehicles and more, at a group rate and sells the stuff individually for profit.

This is a business that will take some work as you get to know the ropes but can be very lucrative in the long run.

68. Start a Vending Machine Business

Many companies want vending machines installed at their businesses for the convenience of employees and clients alike.

Although this type of side hustle would involve some costly initial cash, you may be able to make it up quickly if you install the machines in thriving businesses that service large numbers of people.

69. Pick Up Trash in Parking Lots

Brian Winch came on the podcast to share how he picks up trash around parking lots and now earns a 6-figure income by doing so. Although it may not be glorious work, it does pay well and it’s extremely affordable to get started. Before you get started, check out the Clean Lots tutorial here.

You’ve Got to be Kidding Me Hustles

Before you read on, just remember the name of these side hustles are you’ve-go-to-be-kidding-me side hustles. Some of them will actually shock you ?.

70. Be a Sperm Donor

This is straight out of the movie Road Trip when they need gas money. However, you can make substantial money donating sperm, with some places offering up $1,000/month to healthy men. Be aware, if you’re not a true thoroughbred, you won’t be paid as much!

71. Be a Plasma Donor

Since there is no way to synthetically make plasma, you will be compensated for your donation. Rates vary from state to state, but you can make on average $200/month for only a few hours of your time….and blood.

We have a full list of where you can earn $400 per month donating plasma here.

72. Become a Cuddler

Ah yes, cuddling. This is an actual real job and I recently saw it featured in a news segment. People are paying for up to 3 hours of platonic hugging (and they pay a lot). Job requirements: enjoy hugging strangers.

73. Pick up Dog Poop

Who likes picking up dog poop? Nobody. This is why you can get paid for it.

youtube

74. Rent-a-Friend

You can sign up for free at Rentafriend to be someone else friend both part-time and full-time with pay between $20/hr – $50/hr. Yes, this sounds very strange from the outside looking in, but a lot of times you are helping someone get acquainted in a new town, meet a new group of friends, or simply have a cup of coffee with. Most importantly – friendship is always platonic (no touching).

Easy Peasy Hustles

These are some of the classic side hustles that we call the easy peasy ones. If you are looking for simple, but yet effective, these are the side hustles for you.

75. Babysitting

If you like kids and don’t go out on the weekends, become a babysitter. Advertise to all of your friends (and Facebook Friends) that you will watch their kids so they can have a date night. New to the area? Then get connected with Care.com to become a certified/recommended babysitter in your area.

76. Dog Walking

Create this ad: “Love your dog but simply don’t have time to walk them? Let me help you!” There will always be someone willing to pay to keep their doggy happy, and this person is you.

77. Gig Walking

Download the free App and then find “gigs” in your neighborhood that companies are willing to pay you for. Can you check out the price of milk in a certain store for $6 or snap a pic of a storefront for $5 on the way to work? Note: You will start off with the crappier jobs in the beginning, but prove yourself and you will start getting offered the higher-paying jobs soon enough.

78. Golf Course

If you love being around the golf course (or don’t mind a few drunk old men) you can make pretty good money part-time by collecting balls off the range, cleaning golf carts, or serving cold beers at the tee box.

79. House-sitting

Who doesn’t want to get paid for simply living in someone else’s house for a few day days? This is simple and people will pay you for it. You can think of it as a mini staycation too!

80. Mystery Shopper

Get paid $10 – $30 on average to be a mystery shopper. However, beware because there are a lot of scams out there. I recommend checking out Marketforce, Best Mark, and Intelli-101 before you head anywhere else.

81. Pet Grooming

There are people out there that simply will not shave their dog and will pay you for it. Create a Facebook Page called “iShaveDogs” and let all your friends know! Someone will hire you.

82. Pet Sitting

If you truly love animals, then why not get paid to hang out with someone else’s dog or cat for the weekend? You can become a pet sitter at Care.com or specialize in only watching over someone’s pooch at Rover.

83. RedBox

You love renting movies for only $1.75, but did you know you can get paid to stock DVDs into the kiosks and make sure they are working properly? Check out Redbox Jobs and also see these 12 free Redbox Codes for free moves and games.

84. Sell ScrapMetal

Post in your social media or offer in the newspaper that you will come and take any scrap metal away for people. Not only could you make a few extra bucks for hauling away metal, but then you could sell it at a scrap yard. Double whammy!

85. Tax Prep

When I was in college, TurboTax hit the Internet. I created an ad on a bulletin board and offered Tax Prep for those who make less than $100k/year so I could use the free 1040EZ software. My overhead was $0 and I charged $20 to punch the numbers from the W-2 into TurboTax. Another great option is to try H&R Block and see which one you like the best. We also have a full review of H&R Block here.

TurboTax

86. Sign Spinner

Do you ever see those people standing on the corner, wearing headphones, oblivious to the entire world around them, and flipping signs in the air? They are making money and you can too. What about sign holder? Well, maybe you’re not the spinning type…

87. Sign Holder

Maybe you’re just not the spinning type 🙂

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Final Takeaway

As you can see, we live in a time when anyone who wants to make a little (or a lot) of money can. Your local area is no longer the only area to make money. The entire world is at your fingertips through the use of many of the options mentioned in this post.

What is one skill you have that others could learn from? Think about what’s the one thing you actually love doing that people would want to pay you for? How can you take your side hustle idea and turn it into monthly income?

3…2…1… it’s go time my friends!