by Michael Skinner

Created on: February 06, 2010   Last Updated: March 12, 2010

Almost everyone has a hobby that can make them money.  For instance, if you are writing on the Internet it is a fair bet that you know Microsoft Office.  There are two ways to make money off these skills at home.  Doing administrative work at home and working as a tutor. 

It is almost always a good idea to get good at something difficult and stinky.  The reason is that someone will pay you for it.  An obvious example is getting good at cleaning bathrooms.  There are people who would rather have a dentist drill hole in their head without anesthetics than clean their own bathroom.  Similarly there are people who hate to iron, wash dishes or generally clean their own house.  You hire yourself out as a house cleaner or find a company to hire you to do that job.

Other seemingly difficult or arduous hobbies like hang gliding or taxidermy can garner you paying students or customers for your skills.

There are some Internet games wherein the pseudo game cash is convertible to real cash under certain conditions.  If you are really good at such games and have lots of free time on your hands, you can sometimes get people to pay you to do the repetitive, boring parts of the game as long as your give them the game credits you earn.

If you like to tinker with old radios or old TVs you might find some folks who would pay you to restore their technological antiques.

Now should be about the best time ever to make some money on Ebay.  The reason is that the foreclosures are still happening around the country.  What this means is people are having to downsize from full fledged houses to tiny apartments and all that stuff they used to have has to go somewhere.  Let them pay you a nominal fee to take it off their hands and then turn around and sell that stuff on Ebay.

When you think about it there ought to be a lot of good stuff out in antique shops and at garage sales these days.  Again, folks are having to scrape together a few bucks to finance their move to a smaller house.  Buy up the good stuff and sell it on Ebay.

If you are good at scrap-booking, knitting or any of the creative arts a well placed website might be a place for you to sale your wares. 

You can offer to mend or launder people's clothes in your own home.  If you have the skills maybe you could even alter their clothes.  Be sure to check with local business laws before offering such services.

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