Who hasn’t Googled “make money”?

That search brings up all those common ways like opening an Etsy store or writing an eBook. The trouble is that these suggestions have been around for a long time and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make decent money when you’re the 500th maker of baby blankets on Etsy or the 500,000th “How to Write an eBook” writer.

Let’s take a few of the well-known money-making schemes and explore the outlandish untapped market lurking on their borders.

Gold

Gold is one of the oldest investments in the history of mankind but there are more ways to profit than buying low and selling high. One way is so crazy it just might work: become a mad scientist.

That’s right: invest in beakers, chemicals, and elbow-length gloves. Spiking your hair is optional. You’ll need bleach, hydrogen peroxide, muriatic acid, and junk gold.

Our forefathers panned the river banks for gold, you’re going to pan the junk heaps. Removing gold plating from thrift store china, broken computer chips, and printer ink ribbons takes time but you get to handle dangerous chemicals and practice your mad cackle–so, perks.

Watch this step-by-step gold refining video for the process. The key is to get free or dirt cheap used PCs or other gold-plated items. The mad scientist in the video didn’t break even because he purchased the scrap PC trimmings online.

Which brings us to our next outlandish idea:

Scrap Parts

Say you’re interested in the gold recovery idea but don’t have the time to refine it or the right hair for being a mad scientist, what do you do?

Place wanted ads on Craigslist for used PCs and break down the gold parts. Sell the usable scraps online to those gold-refining mad scientists.

Other scrap metals can be sold for surprising profits, as well. It isn’t all about gold, people.

Write an Anti-eBook (a.k.a. A Print Book)

Walk into your local gas station or supermarket. Look around. Books about sites in the local area or the history of the town are instant best-sellers in the towns they’re written about. If your gas station doesn’t have one it’s because you haven’t written it yet.

Find a niche topic and publish a book with real-life ink and paper. Ask to rent space on the gas station counter or see if you can sell on consignment in local thrift shops.

Selling a real book at $10 profit to 100 people will make you more money than selling an eBook at $1 to the handful you might get on Amazon (if you’re lucky).

Make It Your Business

The secret to any money-making scheme is to treat it like a business, not a hobby. Be driven, be resourceful, and be responsible. My company’s free online accounting software can help you with that.

The way to make money outside of a 9-5 job is to become a renegade, a daredevil, a freedom fighter for the dream job. The first baby blanketeer and the first eBook writer were daredevils. What’s your scheme?

Author

Mallory Kelly

Author profile

Mallory Kelly is a writer and marketer at ZipBooks.