22 Unconventional Ways to Make Money
Secret Cashflow Sources You Didn't Know Existed
Today in 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:
✔️ How to win in debate class…and life
✔️ The jobs of the future don’t even exist yet
✔️ You could always come work with me, instead
✔️ My favorite not-so-boring ways to get cashflow
How to win in debate class…and life
I don’t remember my GPA. In fact, I find it comical when resumes include them. Ok, nerd.
I don’t remember which classes I got As in, either.
I do, however, remember moments. Brilliant little diamonds to be captured and treasured. I remember debates in class that pushed my mind, questions left open to contemplate. I remember when I realized that joyous feeling every human needs…that I was actually good at a thing.
Let me take you back to college. I was in a debate class at the lauded Arizona State University (wink). Our class of 50 had each chosen a subject that we thought was the most impactful invention for all of humankind. One student chose the wheel, another fire, another religion, another agriculture.
After days of debate, we were finally down to the final two. I was one of them. It was me versus the student who chose pasteurization, with its ability to cure disease and protect food as the cornerstone of their argument.
Which innovation had taken me to the finals?
Condoms.
Yes, those delicate rubber appendage covers adorned with Trojans.
Oh, my poor mother.
Why condoms? Well, I did have logical arguments laid out. But the truth is, I knew the class would be voting to determine who won each debate. All those other arguments were expected...boring. I knew at a young age: Panum et circuses – give them bread and circuses, as the Romans said.
Entertain them, and they will lift you high. Bore them, and they will kill you.
I used images of AIDs ravaging (emotional appeal), I wove stories of women freed from death in childbirth (aspirational appeal) and…I handed out samples (bribing).
Handing out pasteurization is a tad harder. Sorry, pal.
Long story short, I won.
But then my teacher intervened.
She said the class had been swayed by my lubricated goodies and the victory, alas, went to another. I found the intervention more comical than upsetting. But then the teacher sat me down to have “a talk.”
“Oh Codie. Why, oh why, would you turn my debate into a charade? Why would you not use logic alone in debate?”
To which I replied, “You told me the parameters and the goal…to win. And I did.”
Teacher, dear teacher, when you let the masses decide, you have to appeal to the masses. She wanted me to appeal to her, but she was one vote in an audience of 50. I knew who my audience really was, and I played for them.
That is the problem with theory vs reality, with school vs life, with our current media vs media of old.
The truth is, humans are not swayed by logic alone.
Logic must be snuck in like a thief in the night, under the cover of fireworks – that is, emotion.
Forget this at your own peril. The world isn’t easy on the logical or the principled.
The jobs of the future don’t even exist yet
The top-paying jobs in 2000 were legal, management and architecture.
Today’s top-paying job: crypto creator. And the truth is, tomorrow’s top-paying job probably doesn’t even exist today.
My lesson in this: What got you here won’t get you there.
If you are looking to the models of old to create wealth for you, I am sorry, but you are going to be in a world of trouble as the speed of change just continues to pick up.
Only you are the master of your fate. Never give it up, never centralize it.
There is a military term COA, or course of action. One of the ways my husband ponders situations is by how many COAs he has, and how many backup plans. Anytime there is only a single escape route, it’s not a great COA.
I think about cashflow sources the same way. In a world that changes as abruptly and drastically as our world does, it is no longer smart to hyper-focus and centralize. You need many income streams.
So this week, we are diving into some of the weirdest ways to make money we’ve heard of.
In the end, you’ll have 22 ways to ensure you aren’t getting a degree in taxi driving in a world that is moving towards Uber.
You could always come work with me, instead
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My favorite not-so-boring ways to get cashflow
Let’s begin from ideas that need no money and build up to those that need quite a bit of it.
$0 needed
#1 Negotiate your salary (or your rates)
It costs you nothing, and it has the highest ROI on time. The only thing stopping you is fear and laziness. Inflation reached a 40-year high in 2022, so if you haven’t renegotiated your salary recently, it’s time to get aligned and ask for more money. #inflayshunnnnn
#2 Rent your car to others
If you’re not driving, let someone else pay you to use your car.
- HyreCar: Rent out your car to rideshare drivers to make up to $12,000 a year.
- Turo: Rent out your car to travelers, make $100s or $1,000s a month. Use the Carculator to find out how much your car could earn.
- TravelCar: Rent out your car while you travel; simply park at qualifying airports.
#3 Rent out all your toys (boards, bikes, scooters, even pools)
Turn your liabilities into assets, volume 1.
- Swimply: Rent out your pool.
- Riders-share: Rent out your motorcycle.
- Quiver: Have a surfboard hoarder like my husband? Rent your spares out on Quiver.
#4 Refinance your house
Ya need a house for these next two. Or, heck, ask your parents if they’ve refinanced – and if not, help them do it in exchange for a cut. We just did this on all our properties for hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings.
#5 Cash-out refinance
Gonna get boring and technical here. If you are refinancing your mortgage and you have home equity in it (aka money that you’ve paid in or that it’s appreciated since you bought it) you can take out some of that money.
Whether this is a terrible idea or a good one totally depends on your financial situation. We did it and then used the money to buy more cash-flowing assets.
Careful of HELOCs, home equity lines of credit. Those are variable rates and can get ya.
#6 House hacking
One of the fastest ways to increase your cash flow is to decrease what you pay each month. Most people’s biggest cost is their rent or mortgage. So why not offset that by renting out some of your rooms, or even subletting a couple of rooms if you are a renter? They’ll pay you to live.
#7 Rent ad space on your car
If you are a frequent roll-around-towner, you can get paid for displaying a company’s advertisement on your car. You get a wrap on your car and start earning money just from making your regular trips. The wrap doesn’t damage your car, and you can earn up to $1,000 in passive income every month.
Especially lucrative for rideshare drivers. Here are a couple of options.
$10 to $1,000 needed
#8 Invest in low-minimum real estate funds
You can use sites that aggregate a bunch of money together to invest in real estate and pay you out, without you having to do a big real estate allocation.
#9 Invest in low-minimum pooled artwork
Noticing a trend here? More ways to get into big ticket historical items with less money. Masterworks allows you to invest in works of art that are $$$, but not if you securitize them in chunks.
Masterworks – $500 minimum
#10 Become a real estate crowd funder
If you don’t have enough money to buy an entire building, you can still invest in real estate. You just need $500 to get started with online real estate investing company DiversyFund, and you can own your share of a real estate investment trust (REIT).
#11 Dividend-paying stocks
Ahhh, an oldie but a goodie. The stock market isn’t just for growers and showers, it’s for payers too. I’ve long had lots of money in stocks that pay out monthly.
#12 Buying or building newsletters
Newsletters are my favorite way to create cashflow, grow your audience and increase your deal flow. Media companies, when they’re done right, may be one of the most powerful lever points I’ve ever seen.
$1k to $10k needed
#13 Farmland and agriculture to cashflow
Farming, agriculture and resources are becoming more and more scarce. How can you capitalize on it for yourself? Turns out, you don’t have to buy a farm (although I am into that). You can instead use a grouping of aggregators or funds. We have them broken down for you.
$10k to $50k needed
#14 Buy land outside national parks and glamp rent
Buy cheap real estate (land) near national parks and rent it out to campers and RVers. We just dropped a YouTube video on this.
#15 License music royalties
This one I know nothing about, but I’m digging into. On Royalty Exchange, you can invest in individual music rights and cashflow off of them.
- Royalty Exchange reports that the average annualized return on investment for catalogs sold on its platform was greater than 12%.
- Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s (SONG) dividend yield is 4.3%.
- Mills Music Trust’s (MMTRS) dividend yield is 9.6%.
#16 Buy some parking spots
If you live in a high-traffic city — Chicago, New York or Washington DC — renting out a parking spot can be lucrative and has a lower startup cost than buying real estate. You can rent them out for anywhere from $200-$500 a month and they go for anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000.
#17 Vending machines to earn $15k a month
If I was a college student, I’d be doing this one. Very low cost to start ($1k-10k) and strong cashflow potential with a very simple business model.
$100k-$1M+ needed
#18 RV parks to earn millions
The RV trend is real and it can be really profitable. You could be like Kenworth and net $15k a month from a $400k investment.
#19 Mobile home parks to replace your income
We will not be in a bull market forever. Affordable housing is scarce, so why not own mobile home parks to solve both issues?
#20 Buying houses for 1/3 the price (then renting them out)
My prediction: the future of houses will be factory-built for a fraction of the cost.
#21 Tiny homes and Airbnb cashflowing
One of my other absolute favorites: tiny homes and Airbnbs. If you have an eye for real estate and design, the cashflow is real. I have some concerns about future regulations, but I like it in this current market.
#22 Laundromats (this is a bit outdated numbers-wise, but y'all get it)
Laundromats are the most simplistic version I see of how to get into the M&A trade. They are straightforward, cashflow and have a relatively low cost of operations.
Tough love moment. All of these ideas should be showing you…
Money is all around. You just have to reach out and take it.
Most people will not. 99.9% will not. Will you?
Question everything and stack cashflowing assets,
– Codie
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