I worked the evening shift (5:30 to 9:00) at a call center. The pay was okay; the work was fairly easy; and my co-workers were nice.
I have friends who work for caterers, passing around the canapes or tending bar. Those tend to be evening and weekend events.
I used to proctor tests (easiest money there is) and tutor learning disabled college students. (Some were just stupid, but some truly were learning disabled.) The school paid slightly more than minimum wage and almost all schools have this service.
I also used to work weekends in homes for the mentally ill and or mentally retarded on an as-needed basis. Also easy money (especially the graveyard shift).
And 20 years ago when I was a very very broke college student I wrote papers for rich kids for between $20 and $50 per pop. I probably only wrote about 7 or so, but the money came in really handy as even $20 seemed like a small fortune back then.
Holy cow, these are fascinating!
I didn’t think to run a search here until after I posted my OP, and I almost wrote a “oh, never mind” follow-up because I found, as Evil Captor noted, similar questions had been asked before (& I felt kind of stupid for not searching first).
I’m so glad I didn’t try to pull the plug!
Absolute intriguing, all the things Dopers do and have done!
Thank you so much for sharing!
Note to self: Remember, don’t ask “What can I do about…”, ask “What did YOU do about…”
I bring in $50 to $200 a week on Ebay, depends on what I find to sell. This is going to be a good week, I picked up a box of old movie and slide projector bulbs for free at a rummage sale, one of the bulbs has been bid up to $98 and some of the others have been bid up to the $20 range.
I also drive limosines a few times a month. The owner of the company got in some legal trouble a few weeks ago so I don’t know what going to happen.
I have committed the sin of freelance writing for major pubs such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post Group. Lucrative but erratic. But a partner of mine is Senior Editor at one of them so they come periodically.
I also run a website that generates between $8-$15K per year for me. For an hour or so a week I’ll take that straight up.
I sold plasma regularly back in Texas until I my arms started looking like those of a junkie.
During my last semester fo grad school at the U of Hawaii, I worked part-time in a 24-hour porn shop. Aaxtion Video I think it was spelled. On Kapiolani Boulevard, not far from Ala Moana Mall. The peep-show booths had Kleenex-box holders for customer use after they’d whacked off. My job was to sweep up the used Kleenex after someone left. This was actually a more interesting job than you would think. And there was a section in the store with live girls who would do things in front of you behind a glass if you kept feeding in bills; a couple of them were strung-out junkies, but several were interesting to talk to. The other guys working there were all good people to work with. And it was funny seeing all these customers stopping in for a quick wank on their way to work in the mornings.
Oh, and I can’t believe I forgot to mention this part: Aaxtion Video – or however it was spelled – was next to a strip joint owned by the same people. Being Hawaii, they were able to bring in some professional porn stars regularly for week-long special engagements. The manager had back problems, and so I was often chosen to go with him to pick them up at the airport, to help with the luggage and such. That meant I knew where in Waikiki they always stayed. Management kept a hotel room there on a permanenet basis for the guest stars to use. I really looked like Joe College, and so I guess that’s one reason they trusted me with this confidential information; the other guys working there were good people, but maybe a little sleazy, so they chose me. These girls were really nice to talk to on the drive in from the airport.
That’s exactly what I was thinking a couple of posts “up” when I realized how many cool replies you’d gotten so far.
I guess people love to write about themselves even more than they love to give advice!
Great thread.
Well, we really can’t “know” what someone else should do, y’know? And people around here are very entertaining, so I love hearing their stories.
I tutored high school kids in calculus over the Internet for ten bucks an hour, for Tutor.com. I stopped after a semester, having nabbed a better paying part-time job, but being able to schedule my own hours and work from my dorm room was pretty nice. You can tutor pretty much any subject, from elementary school math to college level English. Not a bad gig if you’re looking for something to do.
I run a website for a group of churches that brings in a little bit of money. It’s not much, but I it actually is about the same as my car payment each month, so it works out okay for me. Basically, I setup the site, then they email me an update a week so that I can add it in. Archive the old one on their server (so people can access the old sermons they post) and copy the new one from word into an HTML file.
I have offered to edit papers for anyone who has the need. I also wrote some speeches for friends who needed them - but not for college classes or anything, just for random things they need speeches for.
Brendon Small
I mentioned the 24-hour porn shop during grad school in Hawaii. As an undergrad in Texas, I worked part-time in the Periodicals and Microforms section of the campus library. On the top floor of the library was located the campus office of the Texas Commission for the Blind, handling the needs of the blind students on campus. I ended up freelancing for them for my four full-time years. I was paid a small fee by the Commission; this was not volunteer work. (I was a part-time student for one year before deciding I liked school.) Reading textbooks in person and into tape recorders, proctoring tests, helping the students with their research etc. It was a fantastic experience, and I don’t mean in a touchy-feely oh-aren’t-I-a-good-person pat-me-on-the-back sort of way. The students were mostly a great bunch of people, and after a very short while, I stopped thinking of them as “handicapped” at all, but rather as normal as I was. One guy in particular became a good friend and drinking buddy; he even kept a keg all the time in his place, had a refrigerated tap compartment for it and everything. This was the job I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the board in which I assisted this one blind lady with her research for her doctorate in psychology. She had already been a fully tenured English prof at a small college in Kansas. She was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. I also became friends with the counselor and secretary there, so I would often just hang out at the center in my spare time, too, and I could even use the private carrels for my own purposes if I needed a quiet place to study (they were sound-proofed, because that’s where a lot of the reading out loud took place).
And between my regular part-time job in the library, which allowed me plenty of time to root around and read all sorts of material and not just in my own department, but working with the various disciplines of the students at the Commission, my education expanded exponentially. I learned so much that I never would have had I been only a student attending classes and not working.
My experience at the Commission was so good that when I lived in Albuquerque, since my apartment was close to the U of New Mexico, I contacted their office that handled handicapped students. I did do some reading and proctoring there, but it wasn’t the same as at my uni in Texas. The feeling of camaraderie was missing, and I think that was because I was no longer a student myself, but rather just some working stiff who’d walked in.
Also during my time in Albuquerque, I signed up for some medical research. No medications involved. For example, in one, they needed healthy smokers in my age group, and I was still smoking at that time.
And I sold sperm to a sperm bank. It was a new program started by some sort of family-planning clinic, and each donor accepted had to make x number of deposits. Six I think was the number, not sure. I’ve often wondered if I would run into someone who looked a lot like me if I ever visited Albuquerque again.
I spent a short stint working from home as a telephone psychic, giving tarot readings for the Miss Cleo line, among others. It was pretty interesting and I figure I got my good karma points on the call where I persuaded a car thief with outstanding warrants to give himself up–said the cards showed it would only get worse for him if he didn’t! Pay was okay, but I wasn’t all that good at it, not touchy feely enough and the Newage-speak doesn’t flow easily for me. I’ve considered working the same gig but as a phone sex worker–I think I’d do really well as a dom… 
I also had a part time job delivering meals–there are several internet based businesses like BizEats and Delivered Dish that take orders for food from affiliated restaurants and schlep it out to people for a fee. That made decent money–there’s a set fee per delivery, about five-six bucks plus a mandatory tip of 10% added on. The delivery fees are paid by check weekly but the tip money is paid cash every night, and additional tips are straight in the pocket. As long as the car you’re driving gets good mileage this is pretty easy money. Some orders are huge, like 300-400 bucks worth for a party, and that mandatory tip can add up! Additionally, sometimes people prank the place and you end up getting the food for free–we had about ten full steak dinners up for grabs in the company fridge one night, that was cool. I had already spent a lot of time working as a delivery driver so I’m incredibly fast on this kind of work–I pulled in 50-100 bucks per night working from 3pm to 9pm three nights a week, and I usually had to pony up 10-15 bucks per night for gas. One other fringe bennie of this job is that most of the restaurants will give you the employee discount on food, and I still get it at some restaurants even though I haven’t worked that gig for a couple years.
The SO optimizes and sets up computer systems and smartphones for a flat fee and can make pretty decent coin for it even though he charges next to nothing–he hates it that so many people are held hostage to crap computer systems because most of the people who advertise this kind of service are either shite at it or just out to fuck people for as much as they can get. The smartphone thing is lucrative just because NOBODY knows much about the things and the standard interface they ship with is so incredibly non-intuitive and klugey it’s a wonder they keep selling so briskly!
Sometimes I organize dump runs for cash because I have a van and nobody else does… It’s a bitch trying to take a big bunch of yard debris in for recycling or getting rid of household junk when you only have a Honda Civic!
Were all the deposits required to be made during the same visit?
I’m making $100 per week mowing lawns, Snowblowing…
Pet-sitting is also good.
No, thank goodness. 
The first deposit was made after the doctor handed me a couple of porn mags and directed me to the men’s room down the hall (although I believe this was a sample to be analyzed to determine that I was not sterile or did not have any other problems with my sperm and not an actual deposit). The rest were issued in the comfort of my home into a supplied container and then transported there over the next few weeks.
Reported.
Answered the phone for a dominatrix, she forwarded her calls to my phone. I got paid $10 for each client I booked.
I answered the phones for an escort service, same deal.
I had one pet sitting client who would pay me to do her grocery shopping and Christmas shopping. Another would pay me to some shopping, drop off and pick up dry cleaning, etc.
I’ve had clients pay me to sit at their houses and wait for deliveries or repairmen. I thought about expanding my company to include that service.
I had a woman who paid me to twice a week just to clean her litter boxes. Even with 9 cats and 8 boxes it never took more than a half hour, even with her using that horrible pearl shaped litter that would roll all over the floor.
When I lived in the city I rented out space in my driveway. In the city if you don’t move your car every 24 hours it can be towed so people going out of town for a while needed a place to leave their cars.
I also let the local bikers use my garage to work on their bikes. Not only did they pay me, but they took care of all my yard work, invited me to some cool parties and were intimidating to the lower level creeps in the neighborhood.
Bar tended a few nights a week.
I used to make an extra 10 grand a year belly dancing.
I’d make extra money going out on gigs with the strippers, they usually need someone to go with them to keep track of their stuff, collect the money, make sure they’re ok, etc. They prefer men but in a pinch I’d go and get paid $100 for the night.
When I was in college I sold plasma. I made about $60 a week doing that.
I have also bought items cheap and resold them on ebay. However doing that is a crapshoot because of all the fees you have to pay and everything. But if you know something about the product you want to buy and resell, you can sometimes find things cheaply at yard sales and then put them up again on half.com or ebay. But I really didn’t understand how to buy and sell things worth any meaningful amount of money. It was always $5 or $10 crap.