Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone!  We hope that you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Christmas cards from shutterfly

Christmas is almost here!  It is now less than two weeks away.  Where has the year gone?  Well, now that it is Christmas time... it is time to send out Christmas cards.  Everyone loves Christmas cards!  Especially all of your relatives you only get to see once or twice a year.  Most people hang them on the refrigerator or display them on the wall.  This is quite a lot of pressure... because you and your family will be up against all of the other picture perfect families.  If you don't have a picture perfect family, its okay.
Example of perfect family:

You can make up for it with a beautiful Christmas card!  Where can you get a beautiful Christmas card?  SHUTTERFLY!


I have used Shutterfly in the past and they have been fabulous.  There are a wide variety of cards you can choose from.

This is super easy.  All you need is a picture and a computer.  Choose the one you want, upload your picture and your good to go.  The shipping is fast and the cards look great!

Check it out!!!!!  Thank you shutterfly for making such a great product.

Along with Christmas cards they also have birth announcements (it helps if you have a baby), calendars (it helps if the world has not ended), and oh so much more!

Merry Christmas from howtomakeadollar!!!!!

FREE Christmas cards from Shutterfly!

Celebrate Christmas?  Send Christmas cards?  How about saving some money by getting FREE christmas cards!  

With Shutterfly you can sign up and blog about Shutterfly's Christmas cards and they will give you 50 FREE!  Thats worth about $60.  Not too bad.  

Sign up here:  http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/

But you have to sign up by December 15th... so don't wait!

Blogsvertise keeps paying us money

Howtomakeadollar has been trying to make money not only from our business ideas... but also from our blog.  We haven't really been to successful since we lost $107 because of our "invalid" clicks through our google adsense account.  But, we have found some success with blogsvertise.  

We have been signed up with blogsvertise now for a couple of months.  We seem to only get an assignment every three months or so.  Not very often.  But, blogsvertise is the only company that has actually paid us for blogging!  And for some reason they paid us again.  We have not had an assignment for a long time... but for some reason, WE GOT PAID!

Granted... it was not a lot of money, but it was money non the less.  THANKS BLOGSVERTISE!

Another stolen idea

So it looks like howtomakeadollar is full of good ideas.  One of our ideas... which we actually didn't blog about because we were working out the details of our idea... was to start a website called "whatwillyoudoforadollar."  Kind of a long name and not very catchy... but the idea behind the website would be to have people post things they are willing to do for $1 and/or post things they are willing to pay people to do for $1.

Well... it looks like this idea has been stolen from us!  Somehow, even though we never blogged about it, someone found out about our idea and made it better.  Sort of the like the pot head guy and the jesus toaster.  The better/cooler/very well executed website that stole our idea is FIVERR.COM

They one-uped us by charging $4 instead of $1... and they actually created a cool website... we did not.

Give Your Dog a More Fashionable Butt

Howtomakeadollar has frequently discussed money making opportunities related to pets. There are a lot of them. There's the lame, end of the world stolen idea, the related, but not quite the same, MASSIVE SUPERNOVA DESTRUCTION Idea, the Psychic Octopus Idea (Idea over. Octopus dead, Calimari eaten.), and the Flying Animal SuperVacation Idea.

Well, here is another one: http://www.reargearstore.com/

Yep, its a store that sells butt covers for cats and dogs. I'm sorry. Its not butt covers. Its "rear gear." Sometimes you get an idea and you just know its pure gold from the start. This one appears to be brown gold.

Can Someone Please Help Me Find Where My Missile Landed?

Ok, you've probably heard about this by now. A "large" missile was recently launched just outside of Los Angeles California, and was seen streaking across the sky at sunset by millions of people. However, the U.S. Military has stated that they don't know anything about it, and it wasn't them. Nobody seems to know where it landed, or exactly where it was launched.



This is the type of thing that the military is usually secretive about, and usually winds up saying it was a weather balloon. However, this time they are openly seeking out where it came from, and nobody has breached the "weather balloon" excuse. Probably because it was a missile and everybody knows it.

Howtomakeadollar has already pointed out that our missiles are in danger, and need to be protected and watched carefully by intelligent and capable individuals.

If you are interested in making money off this, just go locate where the missile landed, and sell it the military. I have a hunch they are interested in recovering it, wherever it came from.

How to save $9 on Chipotle burritos on Halloween

Every Halloween Chipotle does a promotion to get people to come and eat their yummy food.  Last year, all you had to do was dress like a burrito (i.e. have at least one square inch of tin foil on you) and you got a free burrito!  This year the theme was anti-processed food.  Howtomakeadollar is not anti-processed food... in fact we support and love processed food!  Without processed food we would all most likely be either dead by now or 50 pounds lighter.

Instead of free burritos, Chipotle was selling $2 burritos.  Thats an average savings of $4.50 per burrito.  Not too bad!  Howtomakeadollar dressed up like processed food and went to Chipotle.  Some people didn't seem to get the memo that the theme had changed this year from dressing up like a burrito to being anti-processed food.  Chipotle didn't care though.  They were giving $2 burritos to everyone.

Howtomakeadollar as I mentioned supports processed foods and by dressing up like one of our favorite processed food... we were able to advertise for one of our favorite restaurants while getting a $2 burrito.  Our dressing up consisted of taping trash to a piece of paper and pinning it to our shirt.  By the way, the McRib consumed for the purpose of making this costume was phenomenal!

So next halloween, be sure to stop by Chipotle with some trash pinned to your shirt or a small piece of tinfoil and you will surely get a discounted burrito!

All good things must come to an end

A while back howtomakeadollar blogged about an amazing octopus that predicted who would win the world cup.  I am sorry to tell you, that Paul the Octopus is dead.

So, Paul the Octopus is no longer a viable option to make money.  Although, I have heard Michael Jackson is making a lot more money now that he's dead than he did when we was alive.  So... who knows, maybe Paul the Octopus is still a good money maker.

RIP Paul the Octopus

How to Cash in Your Nickel Collection

To make sense of this blog, you need to read the previous blogs we've written about nickels. First, we predicted nickel prices would go up, and they did. Second, we clued you in to it and told you to get to work on your nickel collection. 

The obvious question at this point is how to cash in your nickels. There are several ways.

1. The Illegal Way
It is illegal to melt U.S. coinage. However, in the future, its always possible that this law will be overturned. If metal prices ever go totally through the roof, like 25 cents for the metal in a nickel, then the government will surely overturn this law in order to increase the metal supply and reduce prices. So just keep your nickels until the law is overturned. Or, alternatively, you could just break the law and melt them yourself. I recommend putting them in your car and parking in the sun. That will probably melt them, but I don't really know how to go about cleaning them up later. Thats on you to figure out. The criminal mind will probably find a way.

2. By Exporting Them
Another way to make money off nickels would be to export them to a country that doesn't care about U.S. laws, such as China or Venezuela.  If you can find a way to get them to China without paying high shipping costs, this would work.

3. By Waiting for the Inevitable
My guess is the Treasury will eventually start making nickels out of something cheaper such as zinc or aluminum. Look for it in the news, because it will probably happen sometime in the next year or two as inflation keeps increasing. Once the new cheap nickels are in circulation, the price of the originals will go up all the higher as collectors, melters, and weirdos like me start hoarding them all. They will also get bought up by China and other places that will melt them freely. This is your chance to sell them off to people who want them.

4. By Waiting for THE FINANCIAL CRISIS THAT ENDS ALL FINANCIAL CRISES
If inflation gets too far out of control, the Federal Reserve will take the drastic step of hacking off zeros from all our bank accounts. Like I said, its a drastic step. However, if inflation really does go out of control, lopping off zeros is the only widely accepted solution, and its been done many times in the recent past. Brazil hacked off three zeros in 1994 and again in 1998. Zimbabwe lost three zeros in 2006. Israel knocked off 3 zeros in 1985. Turkey lost six zeros in 2004.  Like I said, its extremely drastic, but it is the widely accepted way of handling runaway hyperinflation. By "hacking off zeros," I mean dividing the value of paper money by 10, 100, or 1000 times. Inflation would have to increase significantly in order to warrant this kind of trick in the U.S., but in just the past 20 years a gallon of gas has gone from under $1 to around $3, and movie tickets have gone from under $5 to over 10. Don't even get me started on baseball tickets. So you can see that eventually such a step might be conceivable.

If this happens, there would be a mandatory trade-in of all currency. However, in the examples above, only the paper currency is revalued, leaving coinage intact.  Its much easier to demonetize your bank account electronically than to visit your house and hunt down your piggy bank. The government just assumes that people don't have more than a few pocketfuls of coins, so they leave you alone. Some freak with a basement full of nickels would get off pretty well in this situation. This has the effect of multiplying the value of coins while dividing the value of paper money. Your $10,000 savings account might only be worth $1,000 or $100, or 10, but your nickel would then be worth 50 cents, or $5 dollars, or $50. It sounds far fetched and drastic, but like I pointed out above, its happened several times in recent history, and there is no fundamental reason why it couldn't happen in the U.S. If such a thing happens, your $1,000 nickel collection would be worth $10,000, $100,000 or $1,000,000. If it gets as bad as Turkey, with six zeros being divided off, your $1,000 nickels would be worth $1,000,000,000. Yep, a billion.  If it does happen, you can cash in simply by spending your coins as money like you currently do. The only difference is they would be worth 10 or 100 or 1000 times more. Then you can tell your grandkids about how you used to buy "penny candy" and get a haircut for 10 cents, like your grandparents tell you. Economics works in cycles.

Again, let me say that this is an extremely unlikely scenario. First, inflation would have to go up massively before the Fed would even consider this. Second, the Fed would have to have the backbone to actually lop off everyone's bank accounts. The first step is somewhat conceivable, but the Fed growing a backbone is not.

Nickels Are Now Worth More Than Nickels Are Worth

A long time ago Howtomakeadollar suggested collecting a bunch of nickels, holding them until their metal value increased, and then selling them as metal. We stated this prediction clearly, and we personally guaranteed that nickel prices would go up, over 5 cents. Well, they did. On October 12, 2010, the metal value of a nickel went up to 6.104 cents, meaning that the nickel in your pocket right now is worth more as metal than as money. And its actually worth quite a bit more. Right now the nickel in your pocket has made you just over 20% in profit, without you doing anything at all, except fishing around your pocket and smiling contentedly to yourself.

Since this awesome website is called How to Make a Dollar, I suggest you go clean out your car, look for an old piggy bank, and check under your sofa cushions. See if you you can collect five dollars worth of nickels (100 nickels). If you can find $5 worth of nickels, you actually have $6 dollars. Thats how you can make a dollar off money you already have, without doing any work or risking anything at all. Kind of cool huh?

Well, a dollar is all well and good, but its not an inspiring amount. Thats why we suggested buying several thousand dollars worth of nickels. Going from five cents to six cents is a 20% gain. A twenty percent gain on $1,000 is $200. Does $200 sound like decent money? Its certainly better than a dollar. 

But don't cash out now. Inflation is probably going to be a major theme in the world economy over the next several years. That means that metal prices are going to keep going up. Hold your nickels, collect more of them, and wait until they double up to10 cents in value. If you think that's far fetched, consider that in 2007 nickel prices were up over 7 cents, so its not a big stretch to think they could go higher in the future. A penny from before 1982 is now worth 2.5 cents, meaning it has more than doubled in value. Dimes made before 1965 are now worth $1.68. Nickels are following this trend as well. Right now they are up 20%, but they will eventually double in value at least.

In many ways this was the first "real" idea that we suggested, and we've suggested many other good ideas since then. However, this idea requires very little work on your part, and absolutely zero risk. Nickels are a completely risk-free investment. Worst case scenario, you still have the same number of nickels and the same amount of money. You haven't lost anything. 

Its easy to collect nickels. Just go to your bank and exchange $10 cash for $10 in nickels, or $20 for $20, or whatever. Of course, nickels get heavy when you start going up over $10 worth, so remember to bring a backpack or something, and don't try to buy like $100 (2,000 nickels) at a time. Also, the bank tellers will look at you like you are a crazy person, but you can always turn the tables on them and just look back at them like they are the crazy ones. That always gets them.

Stolen Idea Not Very Good Anyway

A while back Howtomakeadollar rocked the insurance market with extremely low priced supernova insurance for pets. Our policies are still available, and cover the next 5 billion years, so its not too late to buy your policy now.

Well, when you have a great idea, and when the market reacts favorably to it, its inevitable that copycats will come along and try to make a buck off your original idea by tweaking it a little bit. Recently we found out about an insurance company that claims to take care of your pets if you are a Christian, and the rapture happens, and you go to heaven all of a sudden and there is nobody left to take care of your pets. You can read about this company at eternalearthbound.com. To the best of my knowledge it is a real company.

Its real, but its not spectacular. The company claims that in the event of the rapture, an atheist will come along and grab your cat and dog and go take care of them for you, so you can live in eternal peace and joy in heaven without worrying about Muffy and Scruffy back home, while planet Earth rapidly descends into pestilence, war, famine, and death. Policies cost $110 and expire after 10 years.

I'm sure* there are some people who think this is a great deal, and have already ran out and purchased a bunch of policies.

*By "sure" I mean that it is theoretically possible that in some hypothetical situation, under the right circumstances, with enough alcohol, and having recently read the book of Ezekiel, that a person might come under the impression that this is a worthy investment of their $110.


But you need to think about this before you buy it. First, atheists don't believe the rapture is ever going to happen in the first place. So they are collecting your $110 without any plans to actually honor their commitment. Secondly, atheists hate animals. I know, the website says all the atheists are "animal lovers." But thats not true. Really, its not.

The Soviet Union was the most atheistic society that ever existed on a wide scale. So its a good test tube for how atheists actually behave when left to themselves without any transcendent moral guidelines. Most estimates show that at least 30 million people were killed without a trial in the Soviet Union. Even more, up to 100 million, were sent to frozen work camps in Siberia without a trial, where they dug holes in the tundra all day, and filled them in the next day.

How do you think their pets fared during this time? Not too good. Many people believe there were over one million stray, starving dogs roaming Moscow limping and covered in fleas during this time. Atheism is hard on animals, just like it is on people. After all, if there is no God, everything is permitted. Are those the people you want to pay money to take care of your pets?

Now, what about happy, friendly, animal loving atheists in the USA? They don't act like the Soviets do they? Well, no, not now they don't, but right now they are surrounded by a world that doesn't tolerate that kind of behavior. Put them in a society by themselves, and you get the Soviets. And wait until the tribulation starts, and massive epidemics spread around the world, followed by famine and war. Do you think an atheist is going to feel like honoring an old commitment to rescue your pet? -- A commitment he never believed he would have to honor in the first place? Commitments like that are rarely honored during good times. Do you think the atheists are going to make an effort to feed your cat in the midst of a worldwide famine?

Worlds Best Paper Airplane

Howtomakeadollar has officially invented the world's best paper airplane!  It is truly amazing.  Howtomakeadollar has spent countless hours optimizing and testing our paper airplane design.

Would you like to be the life of the party and impress all of your friends.  Would you like to impress that special someone you are interested in?  Making the worlds best paper airplane is the key to impressing all of your friends and family.

Howtomakeadollar is willing to provide you with a step by step tutorial on how to make the worlds best paper airplane.  The step by step plan can be yours for the low price of $2.  (this airplane is soooo good we are charging double our normal amount... trust us... it's worth it)

Buy plans for the worlds best paper airplane NOW!

Every State Loves Howtomakadollar

Howtomakeadollar is very pleased to announce that every state in our great United States of America loves our blog!  Howtomakeadollar has been visited by someone in every state!  Thanks for visiting.

It only took us 9 months... but it finally happened.  Montana took the longest, so thanks to everyone from Montana for checking us out!

Blogsvertise is actually paying us money!

Ever since howtomakeadollar was blacklisted by Google Adsense, we have been trying to come up with a new source of advertising revenue from our blog.  With Google Adsense, we "made" $107 in two weeks, but most of these were from "suspected invalid clicks" so therefore did not count.  So, we have been paid and will be paid $0.00 from Google Adsense.

Blogsvertise recently paid us to post this blog.  Blogsvertise agreed to pay us $1.50 each time the link was clicked on and the reader entered their zip code.  Apparently only one person did just that.  But, one person equals $1.50.  So for about 10 minutes of effort, we were able to get paid $1.50.  Not too bad!

A lot of people have been coming to our website from googling "Blogsvertise" or "Blogsvertise scam".  If you are one of those people than know this... blogsvertise will pay you.  They may only give you about one assignment every two months or so, and then take two months to pay you... but they will pay you... which is more than we can say from our experience with Google Adsense.

Total revenue so far from blogsvertise: $22.10

Please Do Not Implicate Me in Court if Your Stock Trading Scam Gets You Arrested

 A long time ago, Howtomakeadollar suggested making money by tinkering with financial markets and stock exchanges until a financial bubble forms and lots of money comes out.

Today, a guy in France named Jerome Kerviel who followed our advice got slapped with a fine of $6.7 billion.  Apparently it is illegal to create a massive framework of fictitious stock trades in order to inflate an artificial financial bubble across the entire European financial market. Who knew? Those silly Euroweenies are always regulating everything right when it starts getting fun.

Kerviel makes approximately $3,150.00 per month as a computer consultant, so according to this yahoo news story, it will take him 177,536 years to pay back his fine. That pretty much means he's never going to pay it, and every cent he earns will be automatically deducted into his fine.

That means he has zero incentive to work, which means he will be collecting welfare for the rest of his life, which means that a computer consultant and financial genius is going to stop working and start collecting welfare, and the European Union is going to have to eat its own fine. Kind of a weird situation. Here's hoping we don't get implicated in any of it.

Would Somebody Please Get These Aliens Out of My Nuclear Missile Silo

Howtomakeadollar likes to link to stories in the news that are somewhat out of the ordinary and explain how you can make money off them. We've done this frequently. You can read a few of them here and here..

Well, today's story is at least as weird as any others we've encountered. A group of six former U.S. military officers have claimed that aliens from outer space have repeatedly shut down nuclear missiles in the U.S. and Britain. Not only is this a real story, but apparently they have convinced some high ranking people at the National Press Club to let them do a news conference. A good summation of their story is here. Now remember, this is a real news story reported by the National Press Club and the London* Telegraph. Its not the national Enquirer.


*London is a city in Europe somewhere

Anyway, Captain Robert Salas, one of the officers who appeared at the news conference, said that in 1967 he personally witnessed a UFO hovering over the Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana, and ten Minuteman nuclear missiles were simultaneously deactivated. Similar stories have emerged from numerous nuclear missile sites around the U.S. and Britain, the most recent of which occurred in 2003. He believes that aliens have come to prevent us from nuclear disaster.

I'm going to come right out and say right now that it doesn't matter if this is actually true or not. Either way, our nukes are in danger. One one hand, maybe there are a bunch of intergalactic peace hippies floating up in the sky and arbitrarily shutting down our nuclear warheads. On the other hand, maybe the Air Force has hired a bunch of hallucinating LSD experiments gone wrong to guard our nukes. Either way, we are in danger, and we need a good security force to protect our nukes. Security forces get paid decent money, so thats how you can make a dollar off aliens.

And don't think for a moment that these are happy aliens who believe in peace. No way. If they are zapping our nukes its because they hate us and want us dead. Maybe they are planning to invade, and are testing our alertness, maybe they are just hoping we self destruct. In any case, nukes are good. Nukes are extremely good for world peace. Nukes have been the most potent force of peacemaking in world history.

Consider the two World Wars of the 20th century. In WWI, roughly 16 million people died, and another 21 million were wounded. Thats astounding. In WWII, about 25 million soldiers were killed, and about 40 million civilians were killed. Thats even more astounding. If it makes you feel any better, most of them were Nazis and Communists.

Lots of people have tried to add up all the deaths in the 20th century due to war and genocide, and they've reached a wide range of estimates, but generally speaking we can say that at least 100 million people were killed in the 20th century in wars and genocides.

Now, lets add up the total number of people killed by nukes since their invention.
Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945 66,000 dead, 69,000 wounded.
Nagasaki Aug. 9, 1945 39,000 dead, 25,000 wounded.
So thats a grand total of 105,000 people dead and another 94,000 wounded by nukes compared to 100 million killed without nukes. Also consider that nations with nukes are simply less likely to even go to war in the first place, or be invaded. Since nukes were invented, almost all of the killing has taken place between nations without nukes. Nukes have prevented countless wars, and prevented other wars from escalating.

Now consider that the two largest powers of the 20th century absolutely hated each other. From 1947 to 1991, there was constant tension between the USSR (bad) and U.S. (good). Never before, in all of history, have two nations been as powerful as the U.S. and the USSR and failed to go to war. The reason? Nukes. Both nations knew that if war ever broke out, it would be the end of the world. So war never broke out, and we just had a cold war instead of a hot one. Nukes prevented all out war. How many people would have died if the U.S. and the Soviets had gone to war? How many people died when they did not go to war? 0.

Think about the Cold War some more. During the 1950s and 60s, the USSR advanced through all of eastern Europe, but then stopped halfway across Germany. Why did they stop? Nukes. France, Germany, and Britain all had nukes, and would defend themselves and their neighbors if the Soviets kept advancing. Nukes prevented a communist takeover of all of Europe. How many people would have died?

During the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein launched a few scud missiles wily nily into Israel because he was a murderous freak. Israel told him that if he kept it up, they would nuke Baghdad. He stopped. Again, nukes prevented a war from escalating.

Obviously nukes are capable of enormous destruction, so maybe tomorrow a nuclear war will break out and obliterate the death toll of the last century. But so far nukes have been a tremendous force of peacemaking. They have prevented wars and ended wars, and never started wars. Nations with nukes are merciful* against nations without them, and nations without them are respectful of nations with them.

*So far. I am certain that Iran, if it gets a nuke, will use it almost immediately against Israel or the U.S... Iran is a thoroughly unreasonable nation, run by suicide bombers. Another disaster would be if a nuke gets stolen by suicidal terrorists. People with an interest in their own continued existence will be very careful about nukes, which is why we need to protect the ones we have. 

If you a re tough guy, go join the military and offer your services protecting our nukes from the warmongering aliens.

Snagged another $5 from swagbucks

Several months ago we blogged about making money searching the internet using swagbucks.  The first two weeks we used swagbucks we made $5.  Not too bad for going to swagbucks instead of google to search the internet.  

Our latest $5 took us a little bit longer this time.  Like most of our ideas... we started out strong, had our expectations set too high, lost interest, got sad, stopped trying.  We didn't totally stop trying, just slowed down on our swagbuck searching.  But, after 3 months of searching using swagbucks we got $5 more dollars!

If you are interested in signing up... sign up under us to help us promote pyramid schemes... SIGN UP HERE!.  If you are interested in becoming our facebook friend... friend us here!

Good source for inspiration!

Howtomakeadollar thinks finding inspiration is important.  Inspiration is key to finding both meaning and significance in life.  Thankfully, there is a website that we have become aware of that provides both meaning and significance!  http://meaningandsignificance.blogspot.com/

http://meaningandsignificance.blogspot.com/ is a great blog for finding both meaning and significance in life.  It is a well crafted piece of work.  The blog will provide you with hours and hours of wonderful reading.  Head on over there and check it out!

Looking for a unique way to promote your website or business?  Check out our PromoteME! feature.

Be successful: Lower expectations

Often times in life we become disappointed.  Its true, at least once or twice in your life you will be disappointed.  Most people will tell you to count your blessings, look on the bright side of things, etc... but you will not get that advice from us.  The key to avoiding disappointment in life is to lower your expectations.  This advice is good for life as well as being successful at business.

If you are expecting to start a business and make millions of dollars right away... your expectations are too high.  You should lower your expectations.   Instead of expecting to make a million dollars, you should strive to not lose a million dollars!  That way you will never be disappointed (unless you loose a million dollars of course).

Lower your expectations and you will be successful!

Hippie Pothead Steals Idea, Burns Toast

Well, I suppose it was inevitable that someday some goofy jamoke would get rich off an idea that was first published here. I just didn't expect it to be a hippie, and I didn't expect it to be Jesus toast. It serves us right for offering our brilliant and innovative ideas for free, and being too lazy to actually do anything with them.

In any case, on February 17th, 2010, we published a blog about making money by selling toast that looks like Mary or Che Guevara or Abe Lincoln. We also suggested modifying a toaster to make these images appear.

Well, today someone did just that: I give you http://www.jesustoasters.com/

This man wants to sell you a Jesus toaster. He is serious.

You may also be interested in knowing that he sells pot toasters too. Errr, that is, toasters that make pot leaves appear on bread. Not really meant for toasting pot, although I'm sure he's tried it, and I would guess that he liked it. Again, this is not a joke. Its a real product.

On his website, he says he thought of the idea in "the spring of 2010." The spring of 2010 of course followed shortly after we posted our blog about the idea, and I'm just going to assume he took our idea and ran with it, and never even gave us a shoutout.

Well anyway, we never actually made the toaster, and he did. We never patented the idea, and he did. We never took the risk of ordering a major production run of these toasters, and he did. We never issued a massive media blitz about it, and he did. So it looks like capitalism, ambition, and resourcefulness always win. I'm surprised it was a hippie who possessed all these qualities, but more power to him.

BTW, I'm not just calling him a hippie because he looks like a hippie and sells pot leaf toast. He says right up front that he's a hippie. Plus he lives in Vermont, so I think its a fair assumption from the get go. 

Again, the place to go for all your specialty toasting needs and desires is http://www.jesustoasters.com/

Russian Finance Leader Turns to Alcohol for Answers, Suggests You do the Same

Ok, well, in our last attempt to solve the global financial crisis, we suggested destroying stuff as a means of stimulating further production. This idea was, of course, utter lunacy, and has not worked very well. Nonetheless, if you are looking for an economic theory to justify your most recent car accident,Keynesian Economics is a good place to start.

But, if you are more inclined to discussing fiscal policy while falling into a drunken stupor in a smoke filled bar, then you should forget about Keynes and head to Russia. After all, if we learned anything from the past hundred years, its that when you need a good primer on effective economic theory, you should ask the Russians. And, naturally, just when the world needs a good idea, the land of 100 trillion rubles has come up with one.

Just this week, Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin urged all Russians to "Drink more alcohol and smoke more cigarettes..." Not kidding. Kudrin has been finance minister of Russia since 2000. He says that high taxes on cigarettes and alcohol help pay for Russia's social services, and he believes that if more Russians drink and smoke more, they may be able to pull Russia out of its deficit. Kudrin is the Russian equivalent to the U.S. Treasury Dept. and Federal Reserve combined, so presumably he knows something about economics. However, after looking into it, I've found that his primary qualifications for the job are: 

1. Vladimir Putin appointed him.

2. Everyone who disagrees with Vladimir Putin has died in mysterious cases of accidental firing squad. 

One of these two men rose to the top of the Soviet KGB and took control of Russia through assassinations, threats, and rigged elections. The other is a villain in a James Bond movie.

Well, enough about Czar Putin. Lets talk economics. Specifically, does this idea make any sense whatsoever? Lets consider the angles. Russia's primary exports are:
1. Oil, which they sell to China and Europe,
2. Black market weapons, which they sell to Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and me.
3. Thats it.

So, from the perspective of a finance minister with no professional qualifications whatsoever, it is easy to see how you could wind up turning to the bottle for your answers. Oil is good for your country, but oil alone can only get you about as far as Iran, which is a pretty lousy country. Selling nukes to third world dictators is a dodgy business that you would rather not think too hard about. This leaves you in a bad situation. May as well find solace in the drink. And once you're getting drunk and puffing on a cigarette, you may as well become a government appointed pusher and get everyone else to join you.

And now, some fun with pictures

Here's Vladimir Putin waving a crazy gun around in public. I think he's a reasonable guy to be in charge of the world's largest nuclear weapon cache, don't you? Aren't you glad the U.S. took the lead on nonproliferation?

Make money from a giant horse

Most people stay away from buying horses.  Horses usually cost a gigantic amount of money.  But, if you buy a gigantic horse... you can actually make money.  Its true... I saw it with my very own eyes at the fair.  People were actually paying money to see to see Sampson the Giant Horse.

So... buy a giant horse, join the fair, and make money!

When you fall down... get up again, and again, and again, and again

This video doesn't really have anything to do about making money... but it does have to do with not giving up.  Whenever you fail... in life or in business.... trying again and again is vital to success!

Enjoy the video... we hope it is inspirational for everyone to be thankful for what we have in life as well as helping us to not give up.  Try again and again and again every time we fail in life and business!

Make $0.60 from blogsvertise

Several weeks ago we posted this blog about a website that has information on buying a house.  We made $0.60 from this post.  Not too bad for about 5 minutes of work.  Better than the $.0024 per hour we have made working for the same company for 5 years!

The blog that we made $0.60 from was assigned to us from blogsvertise.  Since we have been blacklisted from google's Adsense, blogsvertise has been one of the few ways we have been able to make revenue from blogging.  So if you're looking to sign up for blogsvertise, it is not a scam.  You won't make a ton of money... but you will make some... which is better than none!

Say dumb things about catalog pictures

Supposedly you can make a lot of money making up "witty" comments about pictures found in catalogs.  This website is dedicated entirely to this topic... http://catalogliving.net/

Here is an example of their work:

So, find something easy and sort of funny to blog about and you are sure to gain a cultish like following.

Modern Begging

Tonight as I was walking from the grocery store to my car some high school kid asked me if I had a dollar. Which I replied "No."  I'm assuming he wanted me to give him a dollar, even though he only asked me if I had a dollar.  I did not have a dollar, so my answer was correct.  Even if I did have cash, I would not have given it to him.  I do not support just giving someone money.  All he needed to do was come to howtomakeadollar and see all of our successful ways to earn $1.  Or he could have simply walked in the grocery store and filled out a job application.

Anyways, people begging for money need to get with the times.  People do not carry cash on themselves anymore.  I never carry cash, I only have credit cards.  So, if the high school kid would have said to me "I would like a dollar... oh by the way, I accept all major credit cards."  If he would have told me he accepts credit cards... I would have given him a dollar.

So, if you are planning on begging for money, make sure you get a credit card scanner.  This will definitely increase your revenue!

Convenience is the mother of all invention!

You may have heard the quotation before "Necessity is the mother of all invention."  Supposedly some guy named Plato said it.  So it must be true.  Wrong!  This statement used to be true.  Howtomakeadollar is officially declaring this statement obsolete... just like twitter and netscape navigator!  Everyone has everything they need (at least in some places in the world, and most likely if you're reading this blog, you have everything you need).  

Howtomakeadollar is officially stating for the world to see that we are the first people to declare that "Convenience is the mother of all invention."  If anyone uses this phrase and makes money off of it, we are entitled to all of the royalties you receive... and by reading this statement you wholeheartedly agree to this.  Its true... our needs are already supplied... its time to take it to the next level.  You can make tons of money off of offering peoples "needs" "conveniently."  Simple concept.  Now go make an existing process or product more convenient and you will be rich!

Save $78,296.40

It is a fact that everyone eats.  Well, at least if you want to stay alive it is very important that you eat.  It is also a fact that most people work.  And for 83% of all of the working population, lunch time is the best part of the day!  Howtomakeadollar would like the 83% of you reading this blog to enjoy your lunch even more.  How can you do this you may ask.  Simple... by saving money!  Saving money is almost as good as making money!

Step by step plan to save money

1.  Get a job

2.  Eat lunch

3.  Monday: Eat at McDonalds**: cost $4.35* (4 items off of the dollar menu)

4. Tuesday: Eat at Subway: cost $9.01 (foot long subway melt with combo deal)

5.  Wednesday: Eat at KFC: cost $6.23 (#4 box lunch meal deal)

6.  Thursday: Eat at CiCi's pizza: cost $5.34 (ALL YOU CAN EAT!)

7.  Friday: Eat at Panera: cost $8.53

8.  Stop doing step numbers 3-7

9.  Bring your own lunch to work.

Stopping steps 3-7 and adhering to step 9 will save you $78,296.40 over your career.

*Taxes may vary by location, howtomakeadollar is not a certified tax consultant***
**McDonalds is a great and wonderful place... along with being one of the coolest places in the world, it is a great place to snag free change!  People forget to pick up their change from those fancy change dispenser machines all the time!  Remember: finders keepers
***Howtomakeadollar will become your very own certified tax consultant for only $1!

Making Money with Food Part 4: Sell food at a fair

Today's blog is part of a series of blogs about how to make money with food-based businesses. To read the whole series, click here.  

A really good way to make money is to sell things at Fairs.  Fairs are fun and EXPENSIVE.  For some reason whenever people go to Fairs and/or Carnivals* they spend money.  Tons of money.  It usually costs about $4 for a 30 second ride.  Along with the rides being expensive, the food is ridiculously expensive.  I was blown away by the fact that "fresh squeezed" lemonade cost $6.  The "fresh squeezed" lemonade consisted of 95% ice, 4% water, and 1% Countrytime lemonade mix.  

Also a good thing to sell.... food on a stick!  Everyone knows food always tastes better on a stick.

*Is there a difference between a Fair and a Carnival?

Making Money With Food Part 3: Community Refrigerator

Today's blog is part of a series of blogs about how to make money with food-based businesses. To read the whole series, click here.

I work in an office building with a kitchen that is shared by about 40 or 50 people. As you might expect, the shared refrigerator can get pretty nasty after a while. For this reason, every few weeks the head of the maintenance dept. will send out an email to the company and announce that all fridges will be cleaned out over the weekend.

This is where you come in. But first, let me explain what exactly you will be getting into. Most of the food left in a community fridge is quite nasty. I am persistently amazed at the disgusting things that people will leave in the fridge. One time I saw a whole dead fish - I mean, with eyes and scales and everything, laying on an open plate with a sheet of wax paper over top. It was gone later that day, so I guess somebody gutted a fish in the sink and then put it in the toaster oven until it was done, or maybe ate it raw.

On several occasions I've seen raw ground beef, usually in some sort of container, but not always. Again, they must be cooking the stuff in the toaster oven or eating it cold and raw, because thats all we have in the kitchen.

So, my point is that the fridge is a very gross place, and food that has been left there for more than a few days is even more disgusting. BUT, on any given weekend you can find a few decent items if you are a disgusting human being and have low enough dietary standards. 

All you have to do is wait for the maintenance email to go out on a friday afternoon. Then, late in the day after most people have left, you just go to the fridge and grab anything you want. This isn't so much an idea for making money, but its a good way to save money if you are a disgusting enough individual. Also, you are doing the maintenance crew a favor.  Last January I got me a half gallon of month-old egg nog. It was open, but egg nog gets better with time. 

Making Money With Food Part 2: Cake-Fried Chicken

This blog is part of a series on blogs on successful businesses that use innovative recipes to sell great food. Today we are focusing on a restaurant in San Francisco that sells fried chicken that is dipped in red velvet cake batter and then fried.

The secret ingredient for all good recipes is cake

Now, this may sound really good to you, but they don't just stop there. No. That would be one step short of perfection. So, after frying it in cake batter, they then roll it in cake crumbs. This step is vital to the whole process because it causes more cake to stick to the chicken, and we all know that the only thing better than cake-fried chicken is cake-fried chicken with extra cake.

Of course, this does raise some perfectly obvious questions. Namely, why are they limiting themselves to chicken? I mean, couldn't you fry nearly anything in cake batter and have it turn out better? Also, why are they only using red velvet cake? Don't get me wrong - I love me some red velvet cake, but I wonder why they don't try it with chocolate cake, or marble cake, or yellow cake, or whatever cake. I think this is the type of great idea that has made America great, and it needs to be expanded further into our day to day experiments with fried foods.

Making Money With Food Part 1: Donut Cheeseburger

Today we will start a series of blogs about businesses based on food. We've already written about food on a few other occasions, including blogs about bacon, and blogs about fried candy bars.

Howtomakeadollar loves food, especially innovative foods, or innovative ideas with traditional foods.

Today's blog focuses on an innovative combination of two classic american foods: The cheeseburger and the donut. You may think that combining Krispy Kreme with a cheeseburger is gross. But, its not. Its actually a very good idea that has been growing in popularity over the past few years. Its pretty simple. You just slice a donut in half and stick a cheeseburger inside. Other variations include adding an egg, and adding bacon, which Howtomakeadollar supports.

Right now this burger is not widely available, but there is a semi-pro baseball team in St. Louis called the "Gateway Grizzlies," and these burgers are served there at all home games. Additionally the burger has become popular at the Wisconsin state fair. 

This works against you if you are trying to buy one, but it works in your favor if you want to sell them. No competition yet. 

How to sell your house

As members of the blogsvertise network, we are occasionally assigned tasks to blog about.  Today we are blogging about this website: http://click.lthosting.com/~adclicks/TTM2010/click.php?tid=472877


This website Is a website that is geared for people looking to sell their house.  Unfortunately howtomakeadollar wanted to buy this house, but was unable to.  Maybe if we had clicked on This website and entered our zip code a little sooner we would have been able to buy our dream house.  


http://click.lthosting.com/~adclicks/TTM2010/click.php?tid=472877 is dedicated to helping people sell there house.  If you are in the market for selling your house click on the link and enter your zip code to find out more.


As I mentioned this blog is brought to you through blogsvertise and we are compensated each time a reader clicks on this link  and enters their zip code!


If it makes you feel better... this website is a "certified trustworthy site" as well as an" equal housing opportunity."

Don't forget... pictures are key to a successful blog!

Hard work: the only way to make money!

Ideas are good, but if you never do anything with them they are worthless.  So take an idea, any idea and try it out.  It may just make you rich!

Howtomakeadollar has been able to offer our readers over 250 ideas... so take one of them and try it out.  We have been able to take our ideas and have made almost $400 so far.  Thats pretty good considering we only expected to make $1 off of each of our ideas.  We are averaging $1.60 for each of our ideas.  Not too bad.

Don't take our word for it though.... take God's word: "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."  Proverbs 14:23

Make $1.90 from soda cans

Howtomakeadollar took our own advice and made money by recycling soda cans!  You can read our advice here.

In the wonderful land of Michigan, you get paid to recycle.  Michigan pays you $.10 per soda (aka pop) cans you turn in.

Step by step plan to make $1.90.  

1.  Go to Michigan.

2.  Get soda cans (some people say they have to be purchased in Michigan, some do not, I don't know the answer because the cans I used were purchased in Michigan.  Our official fact check guy will have to determine this one for you)

3.  Go to the money making place (aka Bottle Return center) at your local grocery store.

4.  Put the can in the hole that eats your can... while reminiscing about how wonderful Squirt is (howtomakeadollar is currently in negotiations with Squirt to work out the details of our sponsorship).

5.  Collect your money!

How to save $399,000

Step by Step plan to saving $399,000!

1.  Find the coolest house in the world:

2.  Find the coolest house in the world that has the coolest barn in the world:

3.  Find the above mentioned house and barn within 10 miles of your current house

4.  Find the above mentioned house and barn that has dropped in price by almost $600,000 while being on the market for the past 5 years.

5.  Fall in love with the above mentioned house

6.  Dream about all of the cool things you can do with a huge barn and almost 3 acres!

7.  Dream about your great grandchildren coming to the barn to help PapPap with his garden and chickens

8.  Put a contract on the above mentioned house and barn and have the seller choose another contract because the other contract had a slightly shorter settlement date than yours.

9.  Save $399,000!

Simple plan.  Good luck!

Adsense vs. Admarketplace

Most people have heard about Googles Adsense.  It is by far and away the best way for a small time blogger to make money.  Unfortunately for those who have been following howtomakeadollar over the past several months, you would know that we no longer use Google's Adsense because we have been deemed a "significant risk" to google and their customers.  We have been blacklisted by Google.  Ever since our falling out with Google we have been on a mission to find a new source of revenue for our blog.

You may notice there are new "Adsense" like advertisements at the top of our blog.  The ads are provided by Admarketplace.  So far no one has clicked on the ads... which isn't surprising because telling people to click on our google ads got us blacklisted in the first place.  So, I am not telling you to click on the ads at all.  The purpose of this blog is to highlight an alternative to Google's Adsense.  So, only click on an advertisement you are interested in.  Do not "invalidly" click on the ads!

If you would like to help increase the revenue of howtomakeadollar... feel free to donate to us using the convenient button on the top right of this website!

Radioactive Wild Boars Running Wild in Germany

Some things are just too strange to make up. For example, lets say I told you that the wild boar population of an industrialized European nation suddenly exploded, and large marauding hordes of wild boars were attacking citizens in the capital city. You'd probably assume I was making it up. But what if I added that these wild boars were also radioactive? Well, believe it or not, its true. A real German newspaper wrote about it here.

Just two weeks ago a herd of radioactive wild boars attacked a handicapped guy in Berlin. Not out in the woods, not in Zimbabwe. In the middle of Berlin.

The rapidly growing radioactive wild boar population is bad enough that the German government is paying bounties to hunters for every radioactive wild boar they kill. There is no reason you can't get in on this. All you need is a gun and the willingness to stand your ground and shoot herds of attacking radioactive wild boars. If this is something you think you can handle, then by all means get yourself over to Germany and let the killing begin. Somebody needs to put a stop to this.

And no, wild boars are not the same thing as pigs. They are enormous, they have really long, sharp fangs, they are aggressive, territorial, and very fast. They travel in large packs. Adding radioactivity to their bloodstream doesn't help.

This boar's head is about the size of two men, and his fangs, by the look of them, could go all the way through your head and come out the other side. Did I mention it is radioactive?

This is a lot of radioactive wild bacon