Start a Business Training Skilled Dogs

Everybody knows about Seeing Eye dogs right? And I'm sure you've heard of drug sniffing dogs and bomb sniffing dogs too. These are dogs that are trained from birth to reliably perform complex tasks that help make life better for their owners. I think Seeing Eye dogs are incredibly fascinating. The other dogs are just sniffers. Thats a tough skill that requires a lot of training, but a Seeing Eye Dog has to learn to think and see like a human. They are amazing. Other dogs are trained to identify peanuts for people with severe allergies. When I came back from an undisclosed South American nation there were fruit sniffing beagles all over the Miami airport, sniffing for fruit. I don't really know why the customs people were so concerned with fruit, but, those beagles were finding it everywhere. These dogs cost thousands of dollars. The people who train them can make big money.

Well, enough about all of that. You probably don't know the first thing about how to train these kinds of expert dogs. What you need to do is get dogs who can find stuff without any training whatsoever. To do that you need to specialize in a select variety of people. For example, some people are afraid of heights. Well, most dogs are afraid of heights too. Put 100 dogs on the edge of a cliff and every single one of them will get off the edge and back to safety. There. Now you have a "Heights Finding Dog." You can sell it to people who are afraid of heights, and it will save their lives and you will be a hero and a millionaire.

There are lots of bizarre fears that people have, and dogs can solve most of them. I've posted a list below

Felinophobia- Fear of cats
All dogs would be good at this one. If the dog finds a cat, not only will he alert the owner by barking and going crazy, but he will even chase the cat from the premises. Most of these dogs will also perform complementary squirrel elimination as well. This is a value added service. Most bomb sniffing dogs will simply identify the problem, not eliminate it. A cat sniffer goes the extra mile. I actually know a woman who is afraid of cats. No joke. She is terrified of them.


Helminthophobia- Fear of being infested with worms.
No kidding. This is a real phobia that people have. I had never thought of being infested with worms until I heard of this phobia, but now that I think about it, its actually quite terrifying. I don't really know how dogs could eliminate the threat of a worm infestation, but I bet they would bark a lot, and alert you that a herd of worms were coming your way.


Hypengyophobia - Fear of responsibility
Again, dogs wouldn't necessarily be able to eliminate all responsibility from your life, but dogs are extremely lazy, so they would at least commiserate with you about it. Again, this is a real fear that some people have. Not made up.


Russophobia- Fear of Russians- I don't know how to get a dog to detect Russians, but man, this would have been really useful back when Russian spies were a big deal.

Rainbow Bacon

A few days ago we said that the world's best business idea is bacon. You can read about that here. Well it seems that some guy has taken our advice and is doing some groundbreaking things with bacon. Truly groundbreaking. Bacon, I'm sure you know, has remained fundamentally the same for thousands of years. UNTIL NOW.

Rainbow Bacon. Look upon it you mighty ones and despair, for great is its splendor and many are its colors.

Yes, Bacon Today* has reported a new development in bacon technology. A truly revolutionary development. It is called Rainbow Bacon. It is bacon in many colors. It is wholesome goodness in rainbow format. It is crunchy, chewy, salty meat candy with artificial coloring, and I presume that the green strips are good for you. Now if he would only get a big van full of bacon and drive around like an ice cream truck.

*Not a joke. Bacon Today is a real website. Their slogan is "Daily updates on the world of sweet, sweet bacon."

Make money by making those rubber strips that go around your refrigerator door

You know what that little rubber liner thingee that goes around your refrigerator door is called? Its called a gasket. As in the sentence "Jack has a gasket." You want to know what it does? It makes your refrigerator work. Without that rubber gasket in there the door will not shut, and all the little cold particles that make stuff get cold will come tumbling out all over the place. Not only that, but in the absence of all the little cold particles, little hot particles will appear, transforming your fridge into a 70 degree box of lukewarm leftovers that stink up the whole kitchen. This is how refrigerators work.

Here is a picture of some guy pointing at a refrigerator gasket

Even if you do have a gasket, but the gasket has a tear in it from the time you slammed it on a cat or maybe it just got a tear for ABSOLUTELY NO STINKING REASON WHATSOEVER. Well, in that case, the fridge will just run all day long, and all the little cold particles will all sneak right out that little tear and invite all the hot particles in. Not only that, but a whole bunch of condensation will accumulate all over the place and drip on the floor under the fridge. Condensation is a kind of water that appears for no good reason in places that water has no business being and makes stuff all wet that shouldn't get wet. Condensation that comes out of your fridge will usually smell like sweet and sour sauce and eggs. It will accumulate under the fridge and bond with all the little things that live under your fridge. If you have never rolled your fridge out to see what was under it, you need to do so right now. You will be astonished and terrified, like those guys who chase tornados around Kansas and then turn around and run away screaming like little girls as soon as they find one. After hours of building up under there, it will suddenly start to gush out from under the fridge like a busted oil rig, only smellier and with mouse turds floating in it. If you aren't paying attention you will step in it barefoot and it will be cold and you will make a little "yip" noise that makes you sound like a girl. If you are a girl you will make the same noise and then yell at the nearest man to come over and fix it.

Well, what do you do then? You go to Home Depot. Do not go to Lowes. Lowes is the worst place you could ever go. Death Valley is a lot like Lowes, only there aren't little birds flying around in Death Vally taking dumps on the merchandise, and there are no teenage girls with pink nose piercings and dyed black hair working in customer service. Also, its called Death Valley, so you know what you are getting into when you go there.

So, if you go to Home Depot, they will give you a phone number that you can call. You call that number, and some guy will ask you what the number on your fridge door is. You probably never noticed this number before, but there is a big number right on the inside of your door. It doesn't make any difference what brand your fridge is. It doesn't make any difference where you bought it. Maybe its an out-of-business off-brand made in the Weimar Republic by a bunch of Prussian serfs. Maybe you found it in a landfill outside of Vladivostok. Doesn't make any difference. That number will be there, and the guy at the phone number will have a brand new gasket on hand, sized exactly for your made-up refrigerator. He will mail it to you for $100.

He can charge any amount he wants to because he is the only guy in the world who is in the aftermarket refrigerator gasket business. When his first grade teacher asked the class what they wanted to do when they grew up, everyone said they wanted to be athletes and pilots and CIA agents. Not this guy. This guy said he wanted to get into the refrigerator gasket industry. He has no competition, he goes on vacation whenever he wants, and he has a summer home in Vale. His wife is a Tahitian masseuse. He has panda bacon delivered to his house for breakfast.

Make Money by Being Mildly Good at Golf

For the past few days Howtomakeadollar has highlighted ways that ordinary people can become professional athletes on team sports. We mentioned that with team sports you can simply perfect a single niche skill that your team requires. In one of these blogs we mentioned that golf, being an individual sport, does not allow ordinary people to go pro.

This is true. However, professional golf is not a completely individual sport. You see, all professional golfers use a person called a caddy. Caddies do not have to be any good at golf. This is where you come in.

You may not know it, but professional golfers are expected to tip their caddies with 10% of their winnings whenever they make money in a tournament. Now, 10% may not sound like much, but the prize money at major tournaments is extremely high. The "Augusta" tournament winner gets $1.35 million. There are several other tournaments with prizes over $1 million, so I think the key is to be a caddy for a good golfer, not a lousy one.

Caddies, to my knowledge, have one main job and one secondary job. The first job is to keep track of the golf clubs and drive the golf cart around without flipping it. The secondary job is to provide advice to the golfer about which club to use. Now, most professional golfers know a good bit about golf, so, if they ask you what club to use, the best answer is "go with your instincts." Because, really, they know more than you, and odds are any advice you give will be stupid. Remember, you are an ordinary person.

However, it would be helpful to know the names of the different clubs. Howtomakeadollar knows all the names of all the clubs, and has provided you with a short description of several of them below. We are giving this valuable info for free, but we always accept donations.

Club no. 1: "Woods"- These golf clubs are called "woods" because, according to Wikipedia, they "used to be made out of wood*."  Woods are used for long distance shots.

Club no. 2: "Irons" - These clubs are called "irons" because (surprise) they used to be made from iron. I don't know what they are for.

Club no 3:  "Putters"- Putters are called putters because they are made out of putty and butter. They are used for short-range shots.

*"They are called "woods" because they used to be made out of wood." Does this logic work for anything else? Lets just call everything by what it was made out of fifty years ago. What a dumb idea.
Golf is dumb.

Make Money by Being Mildly Good at Hockey

We've been running a series of blogs about making money by playing a niche position in professional team sports. So far we've covered Baseball, Basketball, and Football. Each of these sports has jobs that an average person can perform simply by practicing ordinary skills that they already have. All you have to do is polish your natural skills. All healthy people are able to run, throw and kick. You just need to practice the skills you already have.

Hockey is significantly harder. No one is born knowing how to skate on ice. This is a skill that you not only have to practice, but you also have to learn it from scratch. If you do know how to skate, then you will also need to weigh about 300 pounds, you will need to be very fast, and extremely angry. Basically, if you know how to skate you still have absolutely no chance of going pro at hockey unless you are also a bear. With that being said, you would think that hockey would be impossible for an average person to master.

Wrong. There is one position in hockey that does not require you to know how to skate, and in fact, seems to be based primarily on your ability to fall down and writhe in pain. I'm talking, of course, about being a goalie. Did you know that goalie "skates" are specifically designed to make skating difficult? The entire job of a goalie is to stay in the same spot, and skating is actually a bad thing for goalies.

This means that you can become a goalie even if you don't know how to skate.

There are only a few things you do need to know how to do.
1. You need to know how to put on all those pads. I can't help you with this, so don't ask.
2. You need to stay in front of the goal at all times and take up as much space as possible there
3. Thats it.

Make Money by Being Mildly Good at Football

We've been running a few blogs lately about making money by becoming a professional athlete in a team sport. Team sports allow mediocre players to develop niche skills that are necessary at specific situations during a game. You don't have to have a lot of talent at the sport if you simply practice and perfect a single niche skill.  NFL teams have 53 men on their rosters, so there are plenty of role players who are only there for specific plays. Most football players are colossal freakshows who weigh 300 pounds and can run faster than your car. Most ordinary people would not be able to compete in the NFL. However, the role players who sit the bench for most of the game are relatively normal people who have simply developed one skill, and are willing to occasionally get trampled by large angry men.

1. Kicker. Kickers in the NFL are notoriously skinny and unathletic. Their only job is to kick the football really hard. If you practice this enough starting in your teens, you should be able to get good at it. Most teams use the same kicker for kicking field goals as they use for kickoffs, so if you can kick accurately, you will be worth a lot more. Again, the only thing between you and the NFL is a lot of practice as a kicker. Accuracy is not hard if you practice enough. This job occasionally requires you to get flattened and trampled by several large angry men who only know how to chase footballs and will use the shortest path to the football, even if  especially if it involves trampling on you.

2. Punter. The punter has to punt. Thats it. This job occasionally requires you to get flattened by several large angry men who don't know where the ball is, but do know that you had it last.

3. Longsnapper. This job is for someone who is able to "hike" the ball accurately to a distance of 15 yards. This job ALWAYS requires you to be trampled and beaten by enormous angry men for being in the way.

4. Holder. This job requires you to catch a hiked ball, put it on your toe, and hold it there with your finger. It occasionally requires you to get kicked in the hand really hard by the kicker, and frequently requires you to get flattened by a bunch of large angry men.

Make Money by Being Mildly Good at Basketball

Yesterday we ran a post about how to make money by being mildly good at baseball in which we pointed out a few niche skills that can get you into the pros. Basketball works the same way. The starting salary in the NBA is $457,000 in 2010, so you can make more in basketball than baseball (min. salary is $400,000 in baseball). However, baseball has a high average salary.

In any case, basketball is a team sport with a 15 man roster, so there are a few spots on a team of 15 that are filled by role-players who have a single skill set. The most common niche-skill player in the NBA is the Three Point Guy. The 3 point guy is brought into the game for specifically designed plays that are meant to get the ball into his hands behind the three point line. His entire job is to make the shot. After the play is over he goes back to the bench. The 3 Point Guy is actually a very important player on good teams, and a good coach will have dozens of plays specifically designed around this player. It is an important role, but it is a role that nearly anyone can succeed in given enough practice. Most successful NBA players are extremely tall and muscular, and the average person would never make it in the NBA. However, the 3 Point Guy is different. He doesn't play most of the game, and only has one job. If you are a teenager of average size and you practice shooting baskets from 3 point range for several hours per day, you should get good enough to go to college for free, and to get a pro contract when you graduate. It is extremely difficult to make these shots with a 250 pound 7 ft tall athlete in your face, but if you practice constantly and have a good coach, you can do it.

Make Money by Being Mildly Good at Baseball

Baseball is the only major professional team sport that does not have a salary cap. Sure, you can make millions by playing football or basketball, but you won't make nearly as much as you could in baseball. Individual sports like golf can pay a lot, but you have to be good at them. In baseball however, you don't have to be all that good. It is a team sport with a 25 man roster, so all you have to do is develop a niche talent that gets you onto the team. Sure, if you can hit lots of homeruns, you will get paid more, but the minimum wage for major league players is $400,000, and the average league salary is just under $3 million. This is why labor unions are awesome.

Here are some niche skills that can get you into the pros

1. Learn how to throw a baseball 85 mph with you left hand. Lefties are only 10% of the population, and left handed pitchers are unusually successful against most hitters, so you will be a hot commodity. If you are left handed and 12 or 13 years old, you can practice throwing hard every few days, and if you seriously dedicate yourself to it, you probably will get into the 80-90 MPH zone by the time you are 20 or so. This should be enough to get you into college for free, or possibly drafted straight out of high school into the minor leagues. Baseball even has a name for mediocre pitchers who are left-handed: LOOGY. It stands for "Lefthanded One Out GuY." (seriously) A LOOGY is brought into a close game toward the end of the game and given a specific job of pitching to a single batter who is known to struggle against lefties. LOOGYs usually appear in about 70 games per year, for no longer than 5 mins at a time. They make between $400,000 and 5 million per year.

2. Find a way to get short and stocky, and have extremely reliable knees. Then learn to catch baseballs. Catchers are a very rare breed of baseball player. They are not usually expected to be very good hitters, and they don't really have to play the field much. All they are expected to do is squat behind the plate for 3.5 hours everyday without their knees falling off. I'm not sure how being short and stocky became a requirement, but it is. Most catchers who turn out to be very good eventually get the nickname "pudge."

3. Learn how to throw a knuckleball. There are about 7 billion people living in the world. To my knowledge, only one of them knows how to throw a knuckleball. His name is Tim Wakefield, and he has been a successful major league pitcher for 18 years. A knuckleball is any way of throwing a ball that causes it not to spin at all. If you can find a way to do this you will go pro. One of the best parts about throwing the knuckleball is that you don't have to throw it very hard. Throwing hard eventually causes your shoulder to break in half, and usually ends baseball player's careers. However, knuckleball pitchers can play effectively into their late 40s or low 50s.

4. Play for the Pirates or the Royals. In Pittsburgh and Kansas City, actual baseball skills are not a requirement to make the team, so you can just show up with a uniform and a glove. Very few people are willing to play for these teams, so they will appreciate you showing up.