"Money makes the world go round", people say. Or, at least Liza Minelli in Cabaret did. Either way, we've got to make money. You can go the regular route and work a 9-5 job like the seven in 10 young Americans who are looking for a job change.

Or, you can choose to do something more out-of-the-box and take a page out of these folks' books. We've gathered the most interesting answers to the question: "What is the weirdest way you have made money?" and present them to you here.

From selling feet pics on the internet to helping elders with technology, people have made money in all sorts of funny and genius ways. So, scroll down and maybe you'll get inspired to start a new side hustle.

#1

Cryptomining was pretty weird in retrospect.

Image credits: NotGAF

#2

I work for a pharmaceutical company. The company has a program where they would pay you for blood (small amount, only 100mL) that they would then use for research. Sounds sketchy, but it was legit. So I would be paid for my blood. Pretty decent money, at the time.

Image credits: Bike_Mechanic_Man

#3

Bought 6 donuts, I had 3 separate kids pay me $5 for a $1.89 donut. Made some money there.

Image credits: Hot-Resort215

#4

I assembled a racing sim seat set up for a parent last year at Christmas 2023.

I made $400 for assembly and delivery.

Image credits: rsteele1981

#5

Collecting moss in the Kerry mountains. Lad would pick us up at 6 am in a van and drop us in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes he'd comeback early sometimes not. No phone signal. You pick moss until he came back. 60p a bag, cash in hand.

Image credits: diver79

#6

College student 'medical' trial for workout supplements. Do a leg workout, they draw blood, two days later they draw more blood. Take some unknown powder for a week, do a leg workout, blood draw, two days later blood draw. $400.
I don't know what the f**k they gave me, and by definition neither did they.

Image credits: Worried_Place_917

#7

Got masking tape from work and sold it to the church.

Image credits: Beneficial-Animal-22

#8

My car got in a crash and i got 15k out and repaired it myself for just 500.

Image credits: Grouchy_Explorer_243

#9

My mom wouldn’t allow me to get a job after high school for the longest. So I sold clean urine to people who needed to pass their d**g tests.

Image credits: BlackLusterDust

#10

Went to a club with my friends, hooked up with an older woman (I was 19, she was 37).

Woke up next morning to an empty motel bed, bill had been settled by the woman, she left me two hundred on the nightstand and her business card with the message: I loved doing this, whenever you feel like doing it again I'm up, here's a bit of cash to get you home.

Image credits: burarumm

#11

I'm a retired RF engineer. I once earned $800 for one hour of consulting time that led to the resolution of a years long chronic problem that the vendor couldn't figure out.

Image credits: No_Tailor_787

#12

When I was in high school (Early 2000's) I found this site called furbid where you could get commissions for drawing furry p**n. I made so much money, but some of the requests I got made me really uncomfortable.

Image credits: HauntedGhostAtoms

#13

I stood on street corners dressed as a giant Twinkie and waved at cars.

Image credits: RudeAd9698

#14

While working at a casino I went to a machine for a quick repair. The woman sniffed me like she was trying to do a line of c**e off my shoulder and then gave me 50 dollars.

Image credits: Ouija429

#15

Back around 2003, through an old business contact, an older gentlemen wanted his business to “be online”.
I thought he wanted a website, email, the basic things to get an online business presence.

We setup a meeting so I can get requirements. I get to his office and I start asking questions.
Turns out, he just wanted his 2 computers to be able to access the internet.

Went to Best Buy, bought a router, hooked up his 2 machines to it and was done. I told him not to worry about any money, as it wasn’t a big deal.
He insisted on payment.

He paid me $500 for 30 minutes work. I felt bad about it, but hey, I tried to do it for free….

Image credits: Lazer310

#16

On voting day, some years ago, a 600 pound pig that had escaped from a nearby farm was running around outside the polling location causing mayhem. I captured a video of a pig chasing a cop, which is automatically funny.

That made me almost $3,000 in royalties over the next 10 years. I still get a deposit once in a while.

Image credits: Searchlights

#17

Going to community college. My state passed a bill my senior year of HS that first-time college students can go to any of the community colleges for free. There was stipulations of course, you need to be a resident of the state for a few years, you need to attend classes full-time, and you needed to maintain a 3.5GPA or above. Easy peasy.

A few weeks into my first semester, I get a check in the mail. It was my FAFSA being returned to me. The whole thing. I thought it was a mistake, there's no way this was meant to go to me, right? I called the 1-800 number for FAFSA, nobody there could give me a straight answer as this bill was only a thing in my state, and it is brand new. I called everyone I could think of in my college, the bursar's office, the financial services office, student accounts, the registrar, nobody knew why I had that check.

During winter break, I get an email from the bursar's office. They told me the money was mine, but it's intended for education related purposes, and they suggest I use the check towards tools as I was an automotive major.

I got a check the next semester, then the following, then the last. All in all, I was paid about $8,000 just for getting my degree, plus three certificates. Weirdest, but easiest way I've made a good chunk of change.

Image credits: AdInevitable2695

#18

Let a man play with my feet for 15 minutes.

Image credits: chelsea-from-calif

#19

Probably working illegally in Australia (as a 25 yr old American) making cash under the table setting up exhibits at trade shows. I made $200 AUS to $300 AUS per day doing trade shows.

Or, reading Tarot cards at street festivals in Australia (there's literally one every weekend). I would clear $500 AUS per day at $15 AUS per reading (undercutting the competition charging $20 lol).

I went to Australia in 1996 to visit an online girlfriend, who's best friend committed s*****e while I was in the air - and she left a note blaming her, in part, as the cause of her s*****e. Online girlfriend was understandably upset, so I couldn't stay with her, so I was stuck in Australia with only $300 to my name. I made the best of the situation and staying in hostels all over Queensland. Stayed almost 4 months, had the experience of a lifetime.

I saw her on the way out as she was my ride to the airport. Truly sad situation for her but I am forever grateful for the experience.

Image credits: nurdle

#20

I have a neighbour who occasionally calls me to do small jobs on his property. It's usually tree work.

He doesn't know we're neighbours. He thinks I'm a professional contractor of some kind. He is always extremely impressed with how quickly I show up and get started when he calls. He would be less impressed if he knew that I live a few doors down and work from home.

We initially met when I was cutting down one of my own trees. I think he assumes that I was hired to do that, not that it was my house.

Image credits: AbleStudent

#21

Selling photos or videos of myself explicitly online ☠️
Did it back in 2021 and want to do it still but I feel like it's mentally hard on me since I grew up so conservative.

Image credits: Au79Aurora

#22

Counting birds.

I did a "bird survey" on a beach every day at dawn for some university project. I wasn't a student, but was a friend of a friend who was (and who had originally agreed to do it but got a better offer.)

I was unemployed, had a car to get there, and was paid in cash. Nice way to spend a summer.

Image credits: TorontoRider

#23

Sold my dirty panties and used shoes.

Image credits: mrsrobinsonkindof

#24

I happened to be the exact height and weight as the defendant in a r**e case. A laywer hired a firm to make up 3d scans of me playing the defendant in the car seat with a dummy. 45 minutes of me sitting in a car on top of a dummy got me $800. It was soooo awkward amd weird.

Image credits: hairyrapple

#25

$5 found inside a bible in a hotel room. Now I always check.

Image credits: ExpensivePanda66

#26

When I was in boy scouts, I would sell a handful of pringles for 25 cents. I made bank doing that.

Image credits: AzuleStriker

#27

I hypnotize men to pay me money.

Image credits: CountryGreen4185

#28

I bred hamsters and sold the babies to local pet stores.

Image credits: DrJoels

#29

My church would hold plays and musicals in the basement. In the lobby there was a gallery of local artists.


One night my family and I were seeing a play during "kids week." Basically all the art was made by children.


I was talking to my aunt during intermission when we noticed some middle aged woman and an elderly woman unload a bunch of snacks onto a podium that had a colored cereal box on it. They gave no f***s. They just scooted the box over and started eating.


My aunt was like, "$5 if you say something to them." Sure enough, I walk over and say "excuse me, this is a space for the artists not your personal snack tray." They appeared embarrassed and walk away.


Grandpa later gave me $20 more when he heard this.

Image credits: YayzTheInsane

#30

I bought a used car from a dealership once for $2000. Shortly after I bought it hail got me and I got $1000 cash to fix it. Never fixed it because who cares. Drove it for 5 years and sold it to some Australian guys who were working in the US for $2000 cash. They never did a title transfer.

I got a notice in the mail shortly after I “sold” it that it was previously totalled and it wasn’t disclosed when I bought the car. Got a $5000 check for the settlement.

Australian guys drove it to California and left it in a used car dealership parking lot then flew back to Australia. Dealership called me and chewed me out, but I explained that I sold it to other guys who left it there. We chatted for a bit and they offer me $1000 for the car WITH the title. Took it in a heart beat.

So my $2000 car made me $1000 from insurance. $5000 from settlement. $2000 from selling it. And another $1000 for selling it again. Not bad.

Image credits: Sometimes_Stutters

#31

Ran social media and had a camera. That turned into helping run a medi spa. Then through that business owner I got a gig taking pictures for a escort business and that turned into me taking pictures of independent escorts and running their social media. I started taking their appointments and what not. Took me awhile to realize that I was managing them so I backed out after a couple weeks.

#32

Back in the ‘80s there were OTA subscription television channels that had scrambled signals which required you to use a decoder (which you effectively “rented” from the company as part of your subscription to that channel). Mostly these were p**n stations broadcasting OTA, but without the decoder box you could see anything if you tuned your television to the broadcast channel. Anyway, I used to build decoder boxes and sell them for about $125/each. They took me about 20 minutes to make once I had all the parts I needed and I was selling so many of them, I literally would make them in the back of my high school English class (yes, I’d bring a soldering iron to school, lol)….

#33

When I was younger I played a lot of Laser Tag (specifically a chain called Laser Quest). Captained a team to other countries for tourneys, played for close to 10 years.

My city has something called "corporate challenge" where a bunch of corporations (split into groups based on number of employees) recruited internal teams and take part in dozens of activities. Everything from bowling, laser tag, dodgeball, all sorts of things. You would compete against other teams from other corps, scoring points based on your ranking within that activity.

I got a call from the area manager that the corp challenge finals were happening and someone was "sick" and they needed a filler. The alt had conveniently not shown up. I was paid for my time and we easily won gold, so now I have a gold medal in my bucket of LQ related goodies somewhere.

I was clearly a ringer and brought in just to win the finals. Don't even remember the corp I played for, but found it hilarious that they would pay to win something that exists to be fun and team building. Really speaks to how larger corps work.

#34

As a kid I figured out that if the school lunch was $.85, most kids had $.15 in their pocket. So I'd get those cinnamon flavored toothpicks and sell them for $.15 a piece. The school passed a law banning these toothpicks, so I switched to actual pieces of cinnamon bark, school passed a rule against these as well. Yada Yada, d***s.

#35

Cleaned male horse’s sheaths. Performance horses are in rings and dust/dirt accumulates in there. Particularly geldings. (Neutered male horses). Makes the horse very uncomfortable and can lead to infection. No one wanted to do thiers and I needed money.

Best part was another person came along and offered to do it for half the price. A few people took him up on that. Not sure what he did but those horses seemed to be limping the next day. I got my customers back.

#36

This is just a short list of some of the things I have done

1. Shoveled horse s**t
2. Shoveled pig s**t
3. Helped to build a corn silo
4. Inventoried sunglasses in d**g stores
5. Unloaded semitrucks
6. Was part of a weight loss study program ($300 a month for 12 months)
7. Delivered comunity magazines to local busnesses ($50 a month)
8. Changed light bulbs at a local credit union ($10 a light bulb)
9. Was a secret shopper at McDonalds (Got paid to order and eat different foods).

#37

My friend paid me to teach her/ set her up with camera rig and lighting and basic editing stuff for her to take feet pics to sell online where she made a F**K ton of money doing just that. Gave me few bucks a few times with helping her out with a couple shoots too.

#38

Way before Uber and Lyft around late 90's I sometimes was the driver for a tenant living above our house.

Gave me his truck keys, ordered me to drive around his businesses and made sure he was fine because the kicker is that he asked me to do this because he was hammered and didn't want to get caught for DUI.

Most of his business were butcher shops, tortillas shops, and "carnitas" restaurants that were run by his sons and daughters.

Quite boring since like a regular driver, I spent most of the time driving and waiting to move to the next store, but at the end of the evening, I ended with around 50 USD of pocket money each time, that was A LOT for a high-school student.

#39

When I met my wife a good portion of my income came from selling WOW gold and other in game items. I had setup bot programs to play multiple accounts for me farming and I spent my time competing with the Chinese (who turned out to actually be in jail and slave labor). I would make friends with people in all the main guilds and offer them discounted gold from a English speaking player along with raid runs from the TOP TOP guild and stuff like that from someone in game who they could talk to over VOIP and not screw them over. Was a wild time.

She thought I was lying as the best way to explain it was.. I figured out how to make my computer play video games for me and then I sell the fake money for real money.

#40

I swept the floors of a gold mine. Not staff accommodations. In the f*****g mine itself. Full.on respirator and full PPE to sweep. The weirdest part was everybody constantly complimenting me. The stupidest most mundane job that I ever did, but recieved the most praise for.

Or walking through the woods and collecting bark from trees. Taking a helicopter in to work every day, despite an hour of flight time being more expensive than weeks of my wages. (Or doing the same thing, but for dirt, and needing to jump out of hovering helicopters since landing spots were impossible to find. Dirt must be collected!).

#41

I used to work giving environmental snowshoe tours at a high end ski resort. Often, the only people on the tour were women who's partners had left them to ski or were divorcee. On a lot of occasions, after the tour the women would ask if I would be interested in showing them around the resort or the town after work or on my days off. Made some great money and ate at a bunch of restaurants I could not otherwise have afforded. It was strange that some people are so lonely for company that they would pay for it.

#42

Sold my body for medical research. I did a bunch of Harris lab studies, from aspirin to heart meds to pay the bills. I always had a pharmacist friend that would look over the paperwork to see if it was safe or not. Some had over 50 blood draws in a weekend.

#43

Walked past a garage sale, saw a weird looking camera for $20.

Turned out to be an extremely rare field microscope that had some parts not documented online. Someone locally was all too happy to buy it for $2,000, if it had worked I was going to sell it for $4,000 but I was too worried about breaking it further attempting to repair it.

I still buy, repair, and resell to this day but nothing beats the profit margins on that Nikon model H field microscope.

#44

Another one. Had just moved to Seattle and looking for work. Signed on with a temp agency and was assigned to be a tester at ATL. I was working nights, so I’d clean up and go to ATL. They were calibrating ultrasound heads and software, so I’d lay on my side and get scanned for hours.
Room was kept dark for better screen visibility, and warm due to the equipment. Plus audio of my heartbeat. I slept through it after working nights.
Did this for weeks, paid to sleep.

#45

Sold my World of Warcraft account in 2006....twice.

#46

When I was a kid I made fliers and went door to door buying aluminum cans and soda bottles for 2 cents so I could turn them in for the 5 cent refund. I made a lot of candy money off the laziness of people who didn't want to take the cans or bottles to the store themselves.

#47

I was a seat-filler for one night at a WWE show. For those not familiar, the performers know where the 'hard camera' is, and align their performance for that sight line... the promoters will work hard to make that camera angle show a packed crowd, even if the arena is largely empty. Watched the event from semi-obstructed seats. Some of the other people got pulled to fill seats.

#48

Years ago I got a survey in the mail asking me to fill it out with all the radio stations I listen to, what times, where, etc.


It came with a 1 dollar bill and an promise to send more once I return it in the envelope provided.


I filled it out and sent it back and eventually got about 10 cash in an envelope .

#49

When I was working in switzerland in a hotel I accompanied an old russian lady to her room, where she noticed she forgot her bag in her car. Went down to her Maybach and up again for this plain bag and she handed me 1000fr as a tip. Turns out her deceased husband was in the oil business and her son took over and she arrived a couple of days earlier to enjoy the scenery before she has to meet her daughter in law which she didn‘t like. During her stay of 7 days she tipped me more than my regular salary.

#50

I used to work in Burger King. I would take the toys from kids meals and sell them on eBay. Some went for good money!

#51

I bought iPhones and sold and shipped them to Hong Kong so they could then be brought into China to be sold. This was when Apple wasn't selling them in China.

#52

We went to Nova Scotia for basketball in high school. All my teammates were native, and they all got $1000-$5000 extra spending money from their bands. So every single person on the team would pay me $50 to bring their bags from the bus to the hotel rooms. There was 13 other kids, so each hotel we stayed at paid me approx $650. I came home with $2000 more then I left with. *I had $165 spending money for the whole week including meals, came home with $1900ish.

#53

As a kid, I would buy 2-3 bags of candy at 75% off after holidays and then sell candy on the school bus. Made a decent amount off of a couple dollar investment. Once I sold a kid an entire bag, only for the bus driver to make him share his candy with the whole bus since he had so much. Felt bad for him, but them's the breaks.

Honorable mention to finding a Jan Terri cd in a pawnshop for a buck and reselling it on ebay for like $30.

#54

While studying abroad in Japan, I held up a sign saying you could touch my hair for 100 yen. A few people did it in an hour. I bought old Pokemon games with the money and sold them for over 10 times the price in tbe US.

#55

Fired blanks from a shotgun, then threw a dead duck into the air for a hunting dog competition.

#56

Sold my socks.

#57

Early 2000’s, I see a Craigslist post selling a medium format digital back for hasselblad camera for like a few hundred bucks. Mind you this is a 10-20k product.

Met with the guy, it’s legit (real product) and bought it. Needed a proprietary connector from the company which I bought and also checked to see if it was report stolen (they didn’t know) and turned around and resold for a good amount of money which allowed me to purchase an entire dslr and lens set.

Not sure if it’s weird or just opportunistic.

#58

Was flown across the country to peddle credit cards.

I worked at a superstore promoting their credit card to shoppers. I was *really* good, and the marketing company flew me out to go town to town and promote a gas-savings credit card. They would drop the price of gas by 10 cents and the team would go to each vehicle and try to get app sign ups.

Commission for every application, and they covered all my expenses. I could have made a career in marketing, but the longer I did the work the more morally bankrupt I felt.

#59

Was into Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Body book when it came out. Started a Facebook page about it and used an affiliate link for some supplements he recommended. Made about $3500 before the craze fizzled out. Was pretty fun.

#60

I got paid $100 to taste some weird s**t in college.

#61

I did online surveys to fund my *RuneScape* membership.

#62

I used to on ebay, see what people were buying then go to yard sales and buy stuff that seemed in demand and sell it on ebay. This was when ebay was relatively new.

#63

Went to court for traffic tickets. No insurance no registration slips in company truck. Went in. Had one tossed. The other reduced. Boss already paid me for both.

#64

I made $100 tying a neck tie in a double Windsor in under 10 seconds. Note, I’m a woman. .

#65

In high school, a friend let me help him start a business where we scrubbed the inside of water tanks. This was in the tropics and pretty much every house had at least one large corrugated iron cylinder water tank for drinking, cooking, bathroom. Usually it was okay but on a particularly hot humid day those things were probably close to lethal and we shouldn’t have been getting into them.

#66

For a while during COVID I was the personal assistant to a professional body painter.

#67

I worked for a Haunted Hay Ride at a very popular place in my very small town near a very large town....so it was essentially all us kids who grew up together as teenagers and the hickier ones of us wanted to be out in the woods so we would spend the summer building ways to scare people and cutting paths through the forest and s**t and than for October we would just have a bush party in the forest every night with a massive stero and light shows and fireworks and do all the mushrooms, acid, drank pot whatever and scared the s**t out of people at various places throughout the woods and occasionally scared the s**t out of ourselves stumbling in black bears in the dark and were given rave reviews lol

As long as no one got too hurt or died it was tacitly approved lol

The place is so corporate now lol 😂 the owners and managers would have heart attacks now.

#68

Working at sams doing....nothing. not a gawddamn thing. Was told constantly to go ask one if the managers for work, then sent to another, then told to chill while the found something. Had that job for 4 months, this was the time before smart phones but after media players and file sharing so I just watched cartoons and TV shows on the floor and moved the occasional box for 6 hours a day for 6 days a week. I actually left the store several times to go f**k around at gamestop.

#69

Made a giant Chinese takeaway box for a s******r to burst out of.

#70

In high school I had 3 gay friends. They all paid me good money to go meet their parents as their girlfriend.

#71

I held the door open for someone and they handed me a fiver. Told them it wasn’t a job so they didn’t need to tip me, they wished me a merry Christmas and let me keep it.