What is the most creative thing you did as a KID to earn money?
By Bearballew
@Bearballew (1148)
United States
February 10, 2010 9:30pm CST
My brother and I created a carnival in our back "yard". We went up and down the street selling tickets to the kids. We slid down our bus hood (yes we had an old school bus sitting out back), pushed the porch swing really high, rode kids on our handlbars of our bike ... things like that. It actually worked! I think we made $2 or so!
6 people like this
37 responses
@divineathena (1746)
• United States
11 Feb 10
As a kid my cousin and I made made some paintings and sold them to people. We made 10 bucks. Later once, I sold my novels to my friends because I already read them and at the same time I was moving with my parents to another country.
@Bearballew (1148)
• United States
11 Feb 10
very cute! I saw something like this just today on TV on a cartoon. A brother and sister on a corner. He was painting portraits and she was selling lemonade!
1 person likes this
@GardenGerty (160949)
• United States
11 Feb 10
All I did was collect and sell pop bottles. Well, not quite all.My friend told me that the grocery across the street would buy your coupons and pay you face value, because they got reimbursed by the company face value plus five cents, I think it was. This was illegal, but I did not know that then, I was a kid. I turned into a good coupon clipper, too.
1 person likes this
@ErrollLeVant (4353)
• United States
11 Feb 10
my sister and I made pot holders and sold them door to door
1 person likes this
@terri0824 (4991)
• United States
11 Feb 10
I can't say that what I did was creative but it was my summer job for several years and that was picking green beans and sorting them. The thing I hated most of all about that was that my mom served green beans and that was the last thing that I wanted after being in the bean fields. Still to this day they are one of my least favorite veggies.
1 person likes this
@Allie_xoxo (1063)
• Canada
11 Feb 10
with a friend of mine I set up a lemonade stand. The first day we sold the drink to make money for ourselves and then we got an idea. We ran the stand for several more days, added more ware and decided to donate the money to a fund set up for a little girl needing heart surgery. News of our stand spread throughout the town and the local paper even did a piece about us. We ended up raising $200 or so and having a really good time doing a good deed!
1 person likes this
@eshaan (6188)
• India
13 Feb 10
I didn't earned as a kid, but as soon as i completed my 10th grade, i started teaching small children and that was serious earning, not for fun....i continued it all my college years and also after completing my education, i left it only when i was getting married and had to leave the place
as a kid we just had fun and studied too.....but we enjoyed the days...
@sid556 (30959)
• United States
11 Feb 10
When we were kids we put on singing shows and created plays and got all the parents to come to them. Once we sold real mud pies to some city workers. I think because we were just little kids, they bought them. We made a pretty good amount of cash off of them before my mom caught on to what we were doing and made them a batch of real cookies. We also used to collect soda bottles and turn them in for 5 cents each. We usually could find enough to get a couple of bucks easily which back then was a lot of money for a kid.
1 person likes this
@3SnuggleBunnies (16374)
• United States
13 Feb 10
Didn't do anything like that. But I did dumpster dive for cans to earn money for a bike when I was 11. I also cleaned a neighbors apartment for a few dollars here and there.
@dorannmwin (36392)
• United States
13 Feb 10
When I was a child, all of the children in our neighborhood worked together to make a neighborhood newspaper. We spent hours sitting on the porch writing stories about goings on in the neighborhood and in our school and drawing pictures to serve as the graphics for our paper. When we were done with the weekly newspaper we would go door to door with them and sell them to the neighbors for 25 cents each. It worked and we all had a small amount of money.
My daughter is now seven years old and she is now taking part in creative endeavors to earn money. Her current endeavor is drawing and coloring pictures which she is selling to friends and family members for $2.50 each, she's sold about three of them so far and used her profit to buy a dog tag for her dog.
@msfrancisco9369 (10002)
• Boston, Massachusetts
13 Feb 10
Bear,
you are so innovative to work on this one. you can be a future business and be rich with the kind of attitude you have towards earning from making people happy and experience fun. congratulations for generating that amount. everything starts from small thing and you will be surprised it can reach to thousands and even millions! Good luck!
@msfrancisco9369 (10002)
• Boston, Massachusetts
13 Feb 10
by the way...i forgot to share with you my childhood source of additional money for my allowance:
1. i sell icecandies and biscuits in school and in our community
2. i help mom in doing crochet blouses (that later on becomes our family's business)
3. i sell embroidered pillows, bathrobes and bedsheets.
i am earning from commissions. it was fun friend!
@artistry (4151)
• United States
16 Feb 10
...Hi Bearballew, One thing that I remember doing was to make Mother's Day flowers out of red, pink and white tissue paper with pipe cleaners. Then I went broadway so to speak and my cousins and I put on a talent show in the hallway where we lived, and sold frozen cups of koolade. It was quite a performance. We had a lot of fun. Take it easy.
@celticeagle (168256)
• Boise, Idaho
12 Feb 10
I was never really creative craft-wise. I think that trait must skip a generation in my family or something. I did babysit when I was a teenager for several years for extra money. Rather than that I don't recall anything I did when a youth for extra money. I did chores and got an allowance.
@markodoom (243)
• United States
12 Feb 10
I wish I had figured out a way to make money so creatively. I had to rely on (what were) old trusted methods like paper rounds (I had three - one early morning, one in the evening and one at weekends), milk rounds (delivering milk with the milkman) and milk 'collecting' rounds which involved going to all his customers on a Friday night and collecting payment! It was fun though and I was pretty loaded after all that!
@olisaur (1922)
• United States
11 Feb 10
lol! That sounds liek it must have been fun.
I never got extraordinarily creative for money-making when I was a kid. My best friend at the time and I had a lemonade stand a couple of times. We just set up my family's yard furtinute to make a stand and made posters.
@jbaunillo (254)
• Philippines
11 Feb 10
What we did to earn money during summertime was to sell all of our old newspapers and some junks to a junkshop. We could earn more than 4$ and we divided it to three. I just love reminiscing things like these. How i missed my other cousins!
@christinawise87 (856)
• United States
12 Feb 10
We did a couple things as kids to earn money not so creative but did earn us a little bit of money. We would go around offering massages to all the family members, my aunt was bad about this. She would pay us a handful of change to rub her neck and massage it. Then turn around 2 mins later and ask again! She was always a good source of income. Also we use to go around picking up cans crushing them and taking them to sell for metal. We also use to run and get drinks for quarters for family. The fridge was only a few rooms away but they would pay us to run for them. When we would have to run down the block to the store we got a lot more.