Sunday, January 08, 2006

Profitable Laziness


I remember someone telling me once that the best way to make money is to create or sell a marketable consumable item. It makes sense. If you like something and use it up, you'll buy more but everyone is trying to do that. It seems that there are easier ways for someone that doesn't want to put the work into it.

Free money in Las Vegas. Sounds like a great ad, huh. But, it's true if you are a casino with no risk involved. You start by becoming an intermediary for your customers money. One way this is done is by making your customers use chips instead of money. Sure, a majority of it will be spent, but as an observer of humans in this same city many people wind up taking chips home with them because they didn't have time to cash them. Some people don't even know that they can mail those in to get their money back. So that's free money for the casino.

Another way easy money is made in Las Vegas is by giving people their change back from playing slot machines in tickets. The guise of this is that you don't have to carry a bucket of coins or get your fingers dirty (dust from all the coins rubbing each other gathers on your hands as you continually put coins in.) As mentioned above, people forget these tickets as they rush off to go to dinner or head off to their plane. By being given a representation of money, they believe they have that money. These tickets usually are void after 30 days.

In a more minimal way are the use of those machines made by CoinStar (unless represented by another company in your area) which takes your change and gives you a printed out ticket for the funds deposited. Minus a fee for the service ranging from 7% to 8.5%. Sure, it's a lot easier just throwing the coins in there but to think you are giving up almost a dime for every dollar you put in. But then again, it may be worth it if you don't want to go through the trouble of rolling your coins.

In bigger cities, there are people that will stand in line for you at the Department Of Motor Vehicles for a price. These aren't just people, these are actual companies with employees doing this. But, if time is money and you can use that time better to make yourself more money, it might be worthwhile.

Of course, there is also the big money hole... stamp collecting. The United States Postal Service creates lines of stamps with value that get put in folders to go unused and held onto in hopes that its value increases. This also happens with coins minted from the U.S. Treasury.

So, I wonder, what will be the next way to profit from lazy folks and are there any other ways you can think of that they currently do?

8 comments:

Fred said...

From an educational perspective, it would have to be all those on-line services that will sell you an essay on whatever subject you need.

Or, you can be like some of my students and turn in a paper with the links still highlighted.

Beth said...

I'd love it if someone would exercise for me. Of course, I want the benefits from it myself...

LoraLoo said...

How about that "pooper scooper" service. Paying someone else to clean up your dog's crap. There's something just wrong with that. If you can't even clean up after the dog - are you even feeding it?

Ken said...

To take a spin on the "pooper scooper" service, how about house cleaning services in general? I have given it a lot of thought to having someone come in once or twice a month to clean up after me. I am perfectly capable of cleaning my own house, I'd just rather pay someone to do it.

Unknown said...

Oh man, so much for my coin collection...

Teri said...

There will always be ways to profit off of lazy folks. Even in teaching, I have a student who is not struggling at all in school, but doesn't do her homework. So the mom is paying a tutor twice a week $30 for each hour to sit there and do her homework with her. Talk about not wanting responsibility of parenting.

David Amulet said...

People paying others for seemingly easy thnigs aren't necessarily "lazy." It is, as you point out, a value-of-time thing. If my time is more valuable to me than $50 hour (let's say), then it makes sense for me to pay someone less than that to do the shit I don't want to do.

No, I don't pay anyone to type my blog entries. That's all me.

-- david

RT said...

I don't know. I'm still coming up blank. :o(

Oh! We could pay someone to come up with ideas for us! Or has that already been taken? :D