Inspired by this story
Have any of you guys had an experience where you’ve earned a lot of money for very little work or heard any of the celeb type ones as above?
Just so ya know Im poor and am willing to do very little work for anyone willing to pay a lot…!
:: looks at linked story ::
Huh. Rich people named “Dawson”. I’m going to have to speak to my fatehr about his choice of ancestors.
This Sunday I’m going to get eight hours of overtime for simply riding a bus to Chicago and back (about a 3 1/2 hour trip each way). I plan to read a book.
I read an article a while back about the story of Ron Cobb’s involvement with the movie E.T.. As I recall from the article, Cobb met Spielberg several years before E.T. was made, or was even written. They chatted about ideas for future projects, including one that Spielberg wanted to make about aliens. Basically, he told Cobb, “I’m going to make an alien movie sometime, and you’re going to direct it.”
Well, as it happens, Spielberg later decided that he wanted to direct the movie himself. But by then, they’d signed a contract based on directing this abstract idea of a movie. So, Spielberg bought the contract back from Cobb. As I recall from the article, there was a substantial up-front payout (IMDb says $400,000) and periodic royalty checks, eventually adding up to around a million dollars for having nothing to do with E.T.. The final line of the article was Cobb saying something like, “People ask when I get these checks what I had to do with E.T.. I tell them, ‘I didn’t direct it.’”
I used to get paid €60,000 a year ($93,330 at today’s exchange rate) for doing about an hour’s work a day, and running up my first 15,000 posts to the SDMB. I started on €36,000 ($55,998), but they kept on giving me pay rises and retaining me during rounds of redundancies. I guess that hour was pretty good, huh?! 
A few years back I was art director for a company that made video poker machines. They had way more money than they knew what to do with.
I had, maybe, 15 minutes of work a day. For that, I got paid about $45k. I saw a lot of movies, played a lot of games, and did a lot of websurfing.
I could only handle it for a year- I was just freakin’ bored. I also realized that I wasn’t advancing my career in any way, and I was as high up as I could possibly get at the company- I reported directly to the owner of the company.
The perks were nice, but I really prefer working for a living.
Oh Lightnin’ I woulda taken your job in a heartbeat, although I can fully understand your reasons for leaving and jjimm and hour of work a day for all that money sounds so good that if that job opportunity ever arose for me I’d probably die of a heart attack before I had the chance to accept. Good stories everyone x
I was paid $42,000 for three 15 minute interviews. Parts of the last one was used in two long running AT&T commercials. I was paid SAG scale while it ran.
I also received full coverage health insurance during the three year run.
I sold complex and very expensive software at a time when my company produced a blockbuster new product that basically revolutionized our market. I would fly in to see my accounts, demo the software for the appropriate people (this took days, but it was basically pointing and clicking), then spend a few weeks assuring the IT people that it wasn’t going to futz up their networks.
Everybody loved the software and it got great reviews in all the trade magazines. After my visits, most of the accounts put it in their budgets for next year and most of the requests got approved. I really didn’t have to work at it at all. It sold itself. My life was flying around the country giving demos, staying in nice hotels and eating out on the company credit card. I was making well into six figures annually.
The only problem was that I did so well that I sold through my territory in four years and had no one left to sell to. I was also newly single, making those four years about the best time of my life. Unfortuately I am now back to having to work for a living.
On the other hand, there were plenty of other people that had my same job who didn’t do half as well as I did, so maybe it wasn’t so easy. It sure was easy for me.
P.S. There is not a single name in the linked article that I have ever heard of before, excepting Jamiroquai.
They’re all British.
This didn’t happen to me but to a very close friend.
My friend owns a used office furniture store. A few years ago a local dot-com type company went broke and the creditors liquidated everything. He was asked to bid on 2 floors of almost new office furniture. He bid way below what it was actually worth. If I remember he said it was easily $500k worth and he told the creditors he couldn’t go over $110k because he’d have to take it all down, haul it away, store it until he could resell it etc. They agreed to a price right there and signed an agreement.
On the way down in the elevator a guy turns to him and the conversation goes like this:
Elevator Guy: “Hey are you from XYZ Office Furniture? I just moved into the top 2 floors and I need to get them set up”
My Friend: “Lets go up to floors 8 and 9 and I can show you what I have in the building”
They go up to see the stuff my buddy just bought…….
Elevator Guy: “Wow! Nice stuff, what do you want for it?”
My Friend: “I can let you have it for $275k – IF you move it yourself. It’d cost you double that new”
Elevator Guy: “Deal!”
They sign an agreement right there and my friend makes $165k for riding the elevator at just the right time.
Well, not an extravagant sum of money by any means, but considering the effort he put into it. . .
In the mid 80s, my hubby had a job as an “escort driver”. You know those trucks you see on the highway sometimes with signs that say “Wide Load” and such, and they always have escort cars? It was sorta like that, but hubby escorted trucks that were carrying dangerous materials, so he got paid more for it.
It was not unusual for him to pull down $1,000.00 a week, just driving a car. It was a car the company paid for and insured. While he was on the road, they paid for his gas, his lodging, his food, everything.
The big problem with the job was that it was intermittent. The money was good when it was there, but it wasn’t dependable. When we had our first kid in '87, it wasn’t good enough any more.
I got a scholarship for doing well on the PSATs back in the mid-70’s. As I recall, it was for a total of $4K for taking a two and a half hour test. $1600/hour was pretty good pay back in those days 
Is that your view of the effort, or did he express that view as well?
Sold a story once to a tabloid paper - the item was just a line or two about a celebrity - but got $100 for it. Imagine what something really juicy/earthshaking (even from an average Joe) would bring.
Hey, me, too! Only I got $8K. And it was in the late 80’s.
Ooh, that test made me a ton of money, too! Full scholarship plus a $10K a year stipend for for years. (This is the test that determines the “national merit finalists,” colleges for some reason *love *those.)
We’ve made some excellent money in real estate for very little effort–a few papers signed, a few phone calls, that sort of thing.
Well, it’s not as good as some around here, but I work in a call center. Even during our busy time (4th quarter), I have more than enough time to surf the web, read books, pay my bills and generally goof off. I make about double what other call centers pay in this area. Oh, and during 4th quarter, I always volunteer to work every Saturday – time & a half for 4 hours of sdmb/runescape time rocks!