Since childhood I've had an interest in unusual businesses. I grew up with four brothers, and when it was time to vote for which television show we would watch, I sold my vote to the highest bidder. You could call that the business of politics. I collected the paper-wads that fell all over when my brothers had their wars, and then sold them back to them for a couple cents each. I was a war profiteer in the paper-wad wars. I also sold candy out of a hollow book in school.
My business activities were more conventional as an adult, but I still loved to hear about and read about the more unusual businesses. Sitting around a fire in an Arizona desert, I once talked to a man who sold used stuffed animals on the side of the highway. He claimed he sold $3000 worth his first month.
The Most Unusual Businesses
Then there was the guy I talked to in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who collected the bodies of dead deer. The county needed the deer carcasses off the roadsides for health reasons. They contracted with this guy for $25 per body. I'm not sure how he disposed of them, but maybe his other business was providing meat to dog food companies.
When I was living in Traverse City, Michigan, someone started a dog poop cleaning business. Want the dog without the responsibility of cleaning the yard? Call A-1 Pooper Scooper. I'm not sure if this would be better or worse than the dead deer collecting business.
Right here in Tucson, Arizona, there is a man who takes leaves from palm trees and twists and turns them into amazing animal sculptures. He sells these for anywhere from $2 to $12 in the street. The palm-leaf scorpions are the best. He just grabs leaves from the nearest palm tree and he can sell dozens of these in a day.
Unusual Online Businesses
Maybe you remember a few weird businesses from back before Ebay got all their rules. One woman made thousands per month selling used panties to fetishists. She bought new panties for her friends, who got them for free as long as they returned them to her unwashed, trading them in for the next new pair. The used and unwashed panties sold for $10 or more on Ebay auctions and they sold fast.
Perhaps you have heard about the online fantasy role-playing game called "Runescape." It has four million players now. What you might not know is that in addition to buying "virtual real estate" in the game, and earning online gold pieces, you can buy these game things for real cash. There are Runescape entrepreneurs who sell their online houses in the game for hundreds of real U.S. dollars. I think it would start to get confusing - what is real here and what isn't?
Then there was the guy in who decided last year to finance college by selling one million pixels of advertising space on his web page for a dollar per pixel. You had to buy a minimum of 100 pixels and you could have any image you wanted linking to anywhere you wanted. He succeeded in selling all one million within a few months. Maybe it's time for me to get back into unusual businesses.
Steve Gillman has been studying money for thirty years (and sometimes making a little). For interesting and useful information, visit his website,
Unusual Ways To Make Money: http://www.UnusualWaysToMakeMoney.com
