WORLD

75 ways to make money now
 These easy side gigs will put cash in your pockets.  (
By Kate Torgovnick)




1. Be a nude model

“There are no particular physical attributes we’re looking for,” says Allene La Spina, model registrar at the School of Visual Arts (212-592-2404, schoolofvisualarts.edu). “We want someone who’s comfortable being nude and who’s inspiring in their poses.” SVA holds auditions quarterly for the $18-an-hour job (call to put yourself on the list). The single-named Sharine, 26, poses at SVA and at the National Academy (212-996-1908, nationalacademy.org), which pays $12 per hour. “They demand challenging poses that look beautiful but make your feet numb,” she says, explaining that each stance lasts 20 to 40 long minutes. Sharine also poses for artists ($40 an hour) and photographers ($100 an hour), whom she finds through Craigslist or recs from art teachers. To make sure they’re not sketchy, she meets them in public and brings someone with her to the session. “I only want to work with real artists and photographers who have studios,” she says. “Not just someone who wants to see a girl naked.”



2. Provide customer service

Outsourcing company Working Solutions (972-964-4800, workingsol.com) sets you up with a temp gig on the horn, for which you’ll earn between $7.20 and $30 per hour, depending on the project—some “agents” do tech support, others take reservations. The good news is you work flexible hours and you get to wear a Madonna headset. The bad news: You’ll likely be cursed at by strangers.



3. Simulate ailments to help train med students

Remember when Kramer acted out a case of gonorrhea on Seinfeld? Faking an illness pays well—between $18 and $27 an hour—but you’ve got to have skills: Landing a faux-patient role at Mount Sinai’s Morchand Center for Clinical Competence (1 Gustave Levy Pl at Fifth Ave; 212-241-0612, mssm.edu/medschool/morchand/overview.shtml) requires performing two monologues during the audition process.



4. Babysit

Parents used to trust nearly any teenager to look after their kids (we know, they hired us). But these days many prefer college-educated tot-watchers and will pay as much as $35 an hour. To get in on it, upload a profile to babysitters4hire.com. If local parents like what they read, they’ll contact you with jobs. Just leave your boyfriend at home this time.



5. Become a social-media guru

Creating a successful online presence for a business isn’t as simple as setting up a profile and being well-versed in emoticons. The key is to start small. Build your portfolio by helping out friends who are starting businesses, running bar events or promoting their band. Then, pitch local establishments like pizza spots and Laundromats to see if they’ll let you go to town on their Facebook page, shoot a promotional YouTube video for a yoga studio, or see if an author needs help setting up a Wordpress blog. You can find some gigs on Craigslist.com. as well as more techie sites like Elance.com and Odesk.com. You might start at $15 a hour, but your fee will soar with your success rate.



6. Cater waiter

Waiting tables at a restaurant means scrounging for tips. Cater-waitering for dinner parties, corporate events and weddings is essentially the same job—but with an hourly rate of $17 to $20. Send your résumé and photograph to Premier Party Servers (145 W 28th St; 212-499-0886, premierpartyservers.com), which employs 300 part-time cater waiters in New York.



7. Dog-, cat- or house-sit

Members of Sitter City (sittercity.com) pay $9.99 a month for access to a database of baby, pet and house sitters. Create a profile billing yourself as the outlandishly responsible angel that you are, and those in need will come to you. House-sitting tends not to pay, but you’ll get a free place to stay, so see “Rent your apartment.” You’ll make $10 to $20 a day cat-watching; doggy-care wages can reach $25 to $50.



8. Be a phone-sex operator

Dirty talkers typically earn 50 cents per minute of talk time, or a flat fee of $16 to $20 per hour. Requirements include a landline (no cell phones), a computer with Internet access and the ability to not giggle uncontrollably at unusual requests. Start your new career by looking into options at phonesexprofessionals.com or sexyjobline.com. Foreign accents are in demand, so let a company know if you have—or do—a good one.



9. Sell band T-shirts

All it takes to make a good-looking shirt is a desktop design program, a pack of iron-on transfer paper, a color printer and an iron. Make your own band shirts and unload them at shows for $8 a pop. Also works marvelously with sports teams.



10. Hawk other people's stuff on eBay

Listing an item on eBay takes just a few minutes, but some people can’t be bothered. Offer to sell their stuff for 10 percent of the profit. One publicist we know makes $100 a month selling her coworkers’ designer clothes, bags and electronics. Her best tip—if something doesn’t sell, repost it in a week. Even if it got no bids the first time around, it may get ten the second time.



11. Assemble Ikea furniture

Ikea Brooklyn offers furniture assembly for $35 an hour. Underbid the big box by charging $30. Pass out flyers on the ferry or on the shuttles from Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights.



12. Use Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Named after an 18th-century chess-playing device, this service (mturk.com) lets companies pay people to do simple tasks—like judging if two items in a search engine are the same, or coding a subject category for websites. Each listing has a reward amount from a penny to $5. Have your earnings transferred to an account, or redeem them on Amazon.com.



13. Get paid to watch TV

Television-ad research company Nielsen IAG (345 Park Ave South, 12th floor; 212-871-5200, iagr.net) will pay you to sit in front of a screen and keep track of product placement and other details. Brooklynite Tony Johnston, who worked at IAG for four months and got paid about $15 an hour, describes the scene as “an enormous room full of wayward souls—underemployed hipsters, struggling artists, the incurably nocturnal—getting paid to watch television and write quiz questions. It’s easy money to make while keeping your days free to save the world or sleep, depending on one’s predisposition.”



14. Put your hobbies to use

Your mom may get ’em free, but some New Yorkers would pay good money to buy your homemade soap and Popsicle-stick puppets. Offer them up at the American Crafts Festival at Lincoln Center (craftsatlincoln.org; $650-$1,390 for a weekend booth); the more casual crafter can try the Brooklyn Indie Market (brooklynindiemarket.com; $70–$95 per day). Submit examples of your work and register as a vendor online. For more venues, visit artfaircalendar.com.



15. Scalp tickets

No need to lurk outside concerts and games: Sell tickets through StubHub (stubhub.com), a site that lets you charge whatever price you want (legally) for in-demand tickets. The site e-mails you when a buyer bites. You’ll get 85 percent of the total sale.



16. Help people move

Rent a van from U-Haul—pick it up yourself to save the customer the trouble. Charge $40 an hour for your time and advertise on Citimove (citimove.com).



17. Bartend for parties

If you make a mean mojito, invest in a shaker and start mixing for private cocktail and dinner parties—it’s the only time someone will ever pay you to get them drunk. Certification isn’t required in New York, but it will make you more legit if you’re advertising on Craigslist. For help with that, hit the New York Bartending School (212-768-8460, newyorkbartendingschool.com), which offers a 40-hour, $695 course that ends with state certification and job-placement assistance.



18. Pass out flyers

Once again, Craigslist (newyork.craigslist.org) is the place to go—search for the terms flyers, street team and promotion. Live Nation is compiling a street team to work concerts at Hammerstein Ballroom and Irving Plaza three to five nights a week; they’ll make $200 a month. Meanwhile, distributors for Naturally Intense Personal Trainer Service make $12 per hour and get a $50 bonus if anyone they hand a flyer to signs up for training services.







19. Get paid for being a consumer

You like to buy things, and companies would kill to know why. Cash in on your coveted consumer sensibilities by taking part in focus groups and online surveys. Check out findfocusgroups.com for paid listings—commitments vary in length and pay ranges from $15 an hour to more than $300 for more in-depth studies. As a rule of thumb, look for companies you’ve heard of and avoid those that promise crazy money (if it looks too good to be true, it probably is). Also, be sure to never give out your social security number. For lazier folks who don’t want to leave the house, your best bet is online surveys. Start by going to earnontheside.com, a site that ranks paid online survey sites.



20. Tutor for standardized tests

You have to be committed for this one because the application and training take quite a while. To teach for Kaplan Test Prep (212-492-5800, kaptest.com), you need to have scored in the 90th percentile on the test you want to teach. After you attend the required 20 hours of training, you’ll start at $20 bucks an hour. That’s the same fee you’ll earn with the Princeton Review (212-945-6447, princetonreview.com), where you have to take a 30-minute test and give a five-minute lesson audition. If you pass, you begin a 30-to-60-hour training program. Finally, if you scored in the 99th percentile when you took the GMAT and aren’t one of the five people still making millions in the business world, you can pull in $100 an hour teaching for Manhattan GMAT (212-721-7400, manhattangmat.com). Yes, there are some catches: You’ll have to endure two rounds of interviews, audition and two months of unpaid training. You’ll also have to explain to a classroom of naive corporate hopefuls why their career choice is doomed. Doomed!





21. Sell your unwanted books

At Book Off (14 E 41st St between Madison and Fifth Aves; 212-685-1410), you’ll get between 10¢ and $1.50 for your fiction and nonfiction titles. The Strand (828 Broadway at 12th St; 212-473-1452, strandbooks.com), meanwhile, offers up to one-fourth of the cover price, depending on how well preserved the tome is and how likely it is to sell. “I’d love to have a first-edition copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses,” says Strand co-owner Fred Bass. “If it was in good condition, you could get somewhere in the thousands of dollars.” A newish copy of The Secret, meanwhile, will fetch $3.



22. Clean apartments

Start with flyers in your building—everyone likes the idea of someone else doing their cleaning—and work your way up from there.



23. Have a stoop sale

Stay on private property—your steps, porch or an enclosed garbage area—so you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of getting a vendor permit. One Brooklyn couple held a sale last month and made $800 by the end of the weekend.



24. Sell your clothes

Consignment stores like Tokio7 pay you only when someone buys your stuff. Beacon’s Closet (beaconscloset.com), on the other hand, gives you instant cash—35 percent of what the item will sell for. A pair of like-new Converses will get you $6, and a cashmere Marc Jacobs sweater $14. “We buy seasonally,” says Tiffany Collings, manager of the Park Slope branch. “So if you have a wow piece that’s not right for the temperature outside, wait to sell it.”



25. Organize people’s closets

If you’re one of those people whose closet looks like a finely edited Soho boutique, help others tame theirs for $20 an hour. One tip to keep in mind: Don’t toss anything without your client’s approval! Advertise on Craigslist (newyork.craigslist.org).



26. Refinish street furniture

A little sanding and a bright coat of paint, and the curbside table you found becomes a lustworthy vintage item. Brooklyn Flea (brooklynflea.com) founder Eric Demby has a soft spot for people who refurbish old objects. "The Flea is curated—it's not first come, first-served," he says. "But I love what I call 'rejuvenators.' The usually have good success—people respond to it." Sign up online to be a vendor.



27. Write other people’s online dating profiles

Believe it or not, there’s an actual business, Profile Helper (profilehelper.com), that interviews clueless daters and charges them $69.95 to revamp their dating profiles. Clever up your Facebook page to advertise your profile prowess; post info about your service on OKCupid (okcupid.com), MySpace and Craigslist. Charge $30 a pop and tell your successful clients to pass the word along. For more money, offer to snap flattering photos.



28. Busk in the subway

The MTA’s Music Under New York program (341 Madison Ave at 45th St; 212-878-4678, mta.info/mta/aft/muny/) schedules musicians to play each month in city subway stations. Too underground (har) for auditions? You can still legally perform your acoustic rendition of “Circus” in the subway. As long as you’re not using an amplification device, selling CDs or positioned near a booth, in a car, or blocking the flow of traffic, you’re totally within your rights. Check in with the Street Performers Advocacy Project (212-529-1955) to learn the rules



29. Play online poker

At any given time, there are a gazillion players looking for a game of Texas Hold ’Em on sites like Poker Stars (pokerstars.com) and Poker Room (pokerroom.com). One Brooklynite who asked to remain anonymous tells us he made more than $65,000 playing in his spare time over the course of the past three years. “The key to making money is playing multiple games at once. Sometimes I play eight games at a time,” he says. “I like to play in the evening—more people are on their computers, so you have a better chance of matching up with less experienced players.”



30. Set up a chair and offer five-minute massages on a subway platform

Prerequisites: shoulder-rubbing savvy; an unsketchy appearance.





31. Save others from administrative hell

Outsourcing is the name of the game in today’s business world, but not all the work gets shipped out to Bangalore. To get matched up with a client looking for remote assistance, sign up with Solvate (solvate.com/timesmiths/) to become a “Timesmith.” Name your target rate (think $20–100 per hour, depending on the skill level of the work) and lend your services as an accountant, designer, virtual assistant, writer, bookkeeper or techie.



32. Hit up a casino

Take Greyhound’s Lucky Streak bus to Mohegan Sun (Uncasville, CT; 888-226-7711, mohegansun.com) for $25 each way, and you’ll get two $10 bets for free. Just make sure to play games with the best odds—namely poker, blackjack and craps—and place your bets on the 6 and the 8, since they’re rolled more frequently than any number other than 7.



33. Personally assist someone

Running errands, answering phones, walking someone’s pet iguana—personal assistants do whatever random tasks a client requests. The Pavillion Agency (15 E 40th St at Madison Ave; 212-889-6609, pavillionagency.com) is currently hiring—apply through its website. Part-time gigs pay from $20 to $100 an hour.



34. Give walking tours

Big Onion Walking Tours (476 13th St at Tenth Ave, 212-209-3370, bigonion.com) offers jaunts through nearly every Manhattan and Brooklyn enclave and is looking for new guides, who get $50 and up per hour. “But we have extremely high standards—all our guides must have advanced degrees in history and be licensed,” says Seth Kamil, Big Onion’s president. “And it takes four to eight weeks of pretty serious training to learn the Big Onion method.” If you’re lacking the diploma, consider guiding for Foods of New York (917-408-9539, foodsofny.com), which pays $150 (plus tips) for a three-hour tasting tour. The company’s hiring priority: “Personality,” says director of operations Amy Bandolik. “You should have a general love for New York and the historical elements and culture of the neighborhoods that we cover. No Ph.D. required.”



35. Convince store owners to pay you $25 for advertising space on your dog's sweater

Prerequisites: Dog, lack of soul.



36. Be a part-time personal chef

By day, Molly Kincaid is the editor of an online magazine. But because the 29-year-old loves cooking, by night she’s started working as a personal chef. “I’m always buying expensive ingredients and then inviting friends over to eat,” she says. “So I figured I should be doing this for a living.” She posted an ad on Craigslist and has already lined up two regular clients. She charges $50 an hour—less than the going rates for chefs with culinary degrees—and works two to three hours a night. Her advice: Offer to grocery shop, since that can be intimidating to the culinarily challenged. And avoid dishes that involve kitchen gadgets, because if a client is so pressed for time that they’re hiring a personal chef, chances are their utensil drawer will be bare.



37. Spot trends

Trend Hunter (trendhunter.com), a website used by bloggers, marketers and journalists to tap into fashion, tech, business and social spheres, employs thousands of trend-spotters to create its content. Join for free by writing a profile with info about your professional background and personal interests; then, when you come across new trends (off-the-shoulder dresses; urban farming), upload photos, videos and descriptions. The site shares ad revenue with its finders, so people who post frequently can make $200 monthly.



38. Teach a class

The Learning Annex (110 W 40th St; 212-371-0280, learningannex.com) offers more than 8,000 courses each year, from how to be a matchmaker and how to flip houses to how to be a “Real Cougar Woman.” If you have an idea for a class (“How to Make Money Without Really Working”?), send an e-mail to newcourse@learningannex.com. For noncelebrity teachers, they pay 20 percent of the profit. The average class costs $44.95—so enroll 30 students and you’ll make $270.



39. Be a secret shopper

According to Paul Ryan, president of Secret Shopper (secretshopper.com), all that’s required to be a spy consumerist is “common sense.” His company sends sneaks to places like the NBA Store and Equinox. Park Sloper Jessica Tate, 24, is signed up with multiple secret-shopping services and does two to five gigs a month for $20 to $50 a pop. “The pizza-delivery ones are the best because I don’t have to go anywhere, and I get free food,” she says. Get additional assignments at certifiedfieldassociate.com and iccds.com.



40. Transcribe interviews

Most writers—especially Ph.D. students and all those newly freelance reporters without interns—will give their souls to have someone else type out their interviews. Transcribers advertising online charge by the hour (from $12 to $25) or by the minute of recorded conversation (around $1). List on Craigslist or mediabistro.com.



41. Become a focus-group guinea pig

The Focus Room (693 Fifth Ave at 54th St; 212-935-6820, focusroom.com) is a market-research company that provides companies like the MTA, L’Oreal, HBO and major banks with feedback from people like you. Well, maybe not exactly like you. “Clients set the criteria—they may want people in New York who read travel magazines,” says company president Ira Weinstein. Register through the website, then if your demographic info and preferences match what a client is looking for, you’ll be contacted to participate, earning between $85 and $500 each time. Clients most often want nurses, doctors, travelers and prestige-product fans.



42. Find temp work

Companies ranging from nonprofits to law firms constantly need fill-in help; rates range from $12 to $45 an hour, depending on the position and your qualifications. Dust off your résumé and consult our guide to the top NYC temp agencies to score a gig.





43. Rent your apartment to tourists

If you rent once in a blue moon, list on Craigslist for free. If you want to make a habit of it, register at vrbo.com ($249 a year), which will allow you to accept credit card payments and post an availability calendar. Another option if you’re consistently out of town—list at citysonnet.com. “I’m looking for a place that’s fantastic, clean and in an interesting neighborhood,” says owner David Packer. CitySonnet offers rooms for $120 and up and private places for around $135 and up.



44. Substitute teach

In New York City, you need a bachelor’s degree and no criminal history. Apply through the DOE website (schools.nyc.gov) starting in March; eligible candidates will be called in for an interview and writing test. Those who pass are added to the roster of substitutes to receive automated calls about gigs. Some are listed in advance, but most pop up either late the night before or around 5 or 6am the morning of. You can teach up to 40 days a year for $129.61 per day.



45. Sell your photos to stock agencies

Corbis and Getty Images are the biggest, but if you’re not an established pro it’s hard to break in. Instead, try Shutterstock (submit.shutterstock.com), for which magazine editors and graphic designers pay a monthly fee to download images. Each time a subscriber downloads one, you get 25¢.



46. Be a chacha guide

ChaCha (chacha.com), the service that responds to random questions via phone calls or texts, hires guides to send out answers from home. To apply, take a quick test on the website to determine your research prowess. We got info about becoming a guide via text, of course: “I was lucky enough to make Top Guide and now make 20¢ a text. Thanks for asking!”



47. Bike messenge

There’s a lot of turnover in the industry; so as long as you have wheels, you’re golden. Most services pay a commission—ranging from 30 to 40 percent—based on the number of deliveries made, and a messenger who works three out of seven days might rake in $200 to $300 for the week. Elite Courier Services (newyorksbestkeptsecret.com) and Cyclehawk (cyclehawk.com) have good reputations; start there.



48. Be an extra

Despite the jokes, it’s not such a bad thing to come straight out of Central Casting (875 Sixth Ave at 31st St; 646-205-8244, centralcasting.org). Download a registration packet from the website and deliver it Tuesdays or Thursdays at 4pm. Currently, the most in-demand parts are prep-schoolers for Gossip Girl and faux cops and corpses for Law & Order and its spin-offs. “Every day is a deadline,” explains Brad Kenny, manager of Central Casting. “At 4pm today, a show could call and say, ‘We need ten doctors and four nurses for tomorrow—they have to fit these sizes and be this ethnicity,’ and we rush to find those people.” The pay ranges from minimum wage if you’re nonunion up to $130 a day plus overtime if you’re SAG. Also try: Extra Talent Agency (212-807-8172, extratalentagency.com), NY Castings (nycastings.com) and Back Stage’s casting search engine (casting.backstage.com/jobseekerx).



49. Walk dogs

You’ve got two choices: You can look for a gig with any number of organized companies, or go it alone, just you and the dogs. Petaholics (646-732-1282, petaholics.com) is hiring poochophiles who are available between 11am and 4pm, and who have experience with animals, either walking per se or working at a shelter or vet. Expect to bank $100 to $250 a week. NYC Dog Walkers (917-912-3968, nycdogwalkers.com) is also hiring—it prefers employees who’ve owned a dog. Those who go the indie route and post flyers in their neighborhood charge $20 to $30 an hour.



50. Do voiceovers

If you’ve watched Saturday morning cartoons like G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Viva Piñata, you’ve no doubt heard Tom Wayland. The 35-year-old works full-time as the voice director on Pokémon, but also freelances as a voice actor himself. “Compared to other acting gigs, like theater, voiceover work is the best bang for your buck,” he says. “If you book a national union spot with residuals, you can make thousands and thousands of dollars over time.” Wayland recommends signing with an agency like CESD Talent (257 Park Ave South between 20th and 21st Sts; 212-477-1666, cesdtalent.com), which vets hopefuls by listening to their vocal demos. “[A demo] is your calling card in the voice world,” says CESD agent Tom Celia. But he doesn’t think you need to spend a fortune to have it professionally produced—editing together clips on your home computer will work just fine. And if you’d rather try to find work without an agent, Voice123.com has a database of casting listings.



51. Paint apartments

You can post flyers until the cows come home, but your best bet is to befriend supers. Brooklyn part-time painter Peter Williams says he charges $200 to $300 per day; a studio apartment takes him a day and a half, and a two-bedroom, two to three days. Take care to wow your clients with your Michelangelo-like abilities (and your anal clean-up skills), so they’ll recommend you to everyone in the building.



52. Start a “business”

Any hobby that could potentially make money can be considered a business for tax purposes. File a Schedule C and you can deduct expenses considered “ordinary or necessary,” says CPA Neil Schloss of Castle Consulting. If your business is a band, that includes the cost of equipment, practice space, transportation to gigs, even concert tickets and CDs. You’re allowed two years of loss with your business, so even if you don’t sell any discs, you can still save on taxes.





53. Join Amway

Become an Amway (amway.com) “Independent Business Owner” and hawk beauty, health and home-care products to earn proceeds from the markup—the suggested retail price results in about a 29 percent profit. But the big bucks are made by recruiting others—each month you get a bonus of 3 to 25 percent of the volume sold by all the recruits you’ve brought into the fold. The average Amway seller makes $115 a month, but many earn much more. Former midtown accountant Charlie Durso, 53, has been in the game for 27 years and has recruited thousands of sellers, making enough to leave his number-crunching job 19 years ago. He now supports himself working 15 to 20 hours a week.



54. Take head shots for broke actors

Professional head shots can cost $600 and up, so charge around $100 to take photos with a decent digital camera. Have your clients do their own hair and makeup, always shoot them in natural light (it tends to be more flattering) and offer a discount if their friends book sessions with you. Place a basic listing on backstage.com (for free!) or distribute flyers at local acting studios.



55. Write an op-ed

Metro New York pays up to $200 for the pieces that run on its My View page (submissions should be 400 words; send to Ron Varrial at letters@metro.us). “We like columns about life, columns that make you laugh—but don’t try too hard—and columns that force you to think,” says editor Ron Varrial. “Give me something offbeat and it’s got a much better chance of reaching print.” If you can get published in the Times, meanwhile (good luck; the paper receives more than 1,200 submissions weekly), you’ll get $450 (e-mail David Shipley at oped@nytimes.com or fax to 212-556-4100).



56. Create an online store

At CafePress (cafepress.com), you can create shirts, posters and bumper stickers and sell them to the site’s 11 million users. Each item has a base price; you decide the markup. When someone buys a product, CafePress prints it and ships it, and you get a check for your total markups once a month. Tamara Remedios, whose day job is running Restaurant Week in Hoboken and Jersey City, started a popular customized T-shirt store on CafePress called Wear My Name in 2001, on which she spends about 25 hours a month. Her average markup is $6, and her busiest months net about 300 sales. “I put everything I make in a bank account and go on two to three vacations a year,” she says.





57. Entertain/scare children

Uncle Majic, 28, the local hip-hop magician whose ads are in heavy rotation on late-night TV, has entertained for the offspring of celebrities like Wendy Williams and Russell Simmons. “I started very small, handing out flyers at local schools,” he says. “The first year, I performed at 40 schools—that’s 40,000 kids. And how many do you think are having birthday parties?” Uncle M. adds that while being a magician takes skills, “anyone can be a clown—just put on an outfit, blow up some balloons and you can make $200 an hour.” Or consider donning a red nose and working for Majic himself (718-892-0760, hiphopmagician.com). His only requirement: “that you don’t have a criminal record.”



58. Become a virtual-reality mogul

How’s this for meta? In Second Life (secondlife.com), you can start a business and earn virtual Linden dollars, which can be traded for actual U.S. currency. Leo Newball Jr., a 27-year-old who lives in Brooklyn, is a Second Life DJ—he creates music for virtual parties and events. Newball charges $25 to $50 an hour; in a given month, he makes between $200 and $800 while parked in front of his computer (virtual dollars can be exchanged for U.S. currency for a small fee through the SL LindeX Exchange). Nearly any type of business can fly on Second Life—from selling clothes for avatars to virtual real estate.



59. Model your parts

Have pretty hands or knockout gams? Put them to work as a parts model, where your body parts or facial features can earn between an hour for print advertisements, according to Dani Korwin, president of Parts Models (partsmodels.com). If you’re at least 18, send in professional photos of your precious appendages. Once deemed worthy, your feet or hands could be gracing the next Avon or American Express ad.



60. Pen calligraphy

New York’s Society of Scribes (212-452-0139, societyofscribes.org) offers a one-day “Introduction to the Art of Calligraphy” class for $150. Professional calligraphers charge upwards of $4 an envelope, so you can charge at least $1.50 and make your money back in no time. If a wedding has 200 invitees, that’s $300—more if they also want R.S.V.P. or place cards.



61. Sell your hair

Okay, so it’s a Les Miz–style desperate measure. But if you’ve got the tresses and the desire to chop ’em off, why not make a little cash while you’re at it? You post photos and a description on The Hair Trader (thehairtrader.com), then wig and extensions makers bid on your locks. Recent sales include 25 inches of black hair that went for $800 and 16 inches of never-dyed blond hair that went for $600. Fantine never had it that good.



62. Model your hair

Recently, hair-care giant Matrix (matrix.com) cast three women from ads on Craigslist for a new hair-color DVD; each walked away with $900. And Nick Arrojo’s salon, of What Not to Wear fame, advertised there too. “We do advanced education for stylists and teach them new types of cuts,” says Ellen Marth of Arrojo Education (arrojoeducation.com). “All we need is someone open to cutting off a few inches.” Compensation: $100 plus products worth $250.



63. Sell that so-last-year bling

We’re a little weirded out by those Cash4Gold commercials (mail them our jewelry? who are we, Bernie Madoff?). Take the gold you no longer wear to KLIM Jewelry (66 W 47th St between Fifth and Sixth Aves; 212-382-1406, klimjewelry.com), where you’ll make $20 in cash per pennyweight (about 1.6 grams). Event planner Dana Lowenfish got $1,000 for a handful of broken chains, two earrings and an old nameplate. “Gold is at its highest value ever,” she says. “Get cash for jewelry you’ll never miss.”



64. Sell your junk

Doyle New York (175 E 87th St between Third and Lexington Aves; 212-427-2730, doylenewyork.com) holds free appraisals of jewelry, art and household items every Friday from 9:30 to 11:30am. “The most successful thing is jewelry,” says client-services rep Allison Wertheimer. “Also, silverware is doing really well right now, as is glass.” Doyle will either buy your stuff on the spot or accept it on consignment.



65. Be a part-time personal stylist

“Fewer people want to spend a lot shopping,” says pro stylist Angela Hastings. “They want to make the most of what they have.” Hastings, who creates looks for magazines like Spin, People, Entertainment Weekly and Self, started earning good money on the side six years ago when she helped a friend of a friend with her look. “Personal styling is more about reality, and editorial styling is about fantasy,” she says. “I like doing both.” Hastings starts by giving clients a questionnaire to figure out exactly what they want, then she digs through their closets with them to edit down their wardrobe. She won’t divulge her pricing, but others advertising on Craigslist charge $300 to more than $1,000 a day.



66. Scout for models

Keep your eyes peeled for very tall, very beautiful men and women—and with the right find, you can become a scout. Snap some good shots of your subject, scour agency websites to figure out their preferences (each has a different aesthetic), then call their scouting director. Kirsten Morehouse of Bryan Bantry Inc. has paid as much as $2,000 to someone who brought a model to her attention this way. “But it could be up to the $50,000 for the next Gisele,” she says.





67. Be a fit model

If you’re an exact size 4 or the perfect size 8, fashion designers need you to try on their designs and give feedback on what does and doesn’t work for your shape. The pay is great—between $750 and $1,500 a day—but you need an agent. Model Service Agency (570 Seventh Ave at 41st St; 212-944-8896, modelserviceagency.com) is the gold standard and holds open casting calls (show up at 10am on Tuesdays). Mary-Evi McNenny, a 49-year-old Upper East Sider, has worked as a fit model for Bloomingdale’s, Dana Buchman and Bill Blass—and she admits it’s not easy. “You cannot lose or gain weight. Just a few pounds and things won’t fit the same,” she says. “I weigh myself every day. When I go on vacation, I bring a scale in my carry-on bag.”



68. Sell celebrity autographs

You’re in New York, for crap’s sake. All you need is a stakeout near the Waverly Inn, a writing surface (no, not your ass—try head shots) and a great puppy-dog face. A signed Madge LP album cover can sell for $750, Donald Trump’s John Hancock can fetch about $150, and all four cast members of Sex and the City (like we’ll ever see them all together again) can get about $400 on eBay and from autograph dealers. For a database of registered dealers, visit the Universal Autograph Collectors Club’s website (uacc.org).



69. Be a part-time life coach

To get certified as a life coach, you have to graduate from a training program, log ten hours with a mentor and then 100 hours working with clients pro bono. But according to the International Coach Federation (coachfederation.org), which also provides information on local training programs, only 52 percent of clients expect their coaches to be credentialed—that’s 48 percent who don’t care so much. Warwick Busfield, a 53-year-old financial analyst in midtown, became interested in life coaching three years ago when a friend suggested he’d be a natural. He decided to forgo the certification process and found his first clients on Craigslist. Now people come to him by referral. “You need to be able to read messages people are giving you that they’re not actually saying,” he says. “A guy will come to you and say, ‘I can’t make a decision about my career.’ Turns out he can’t make decisions at all.” Busfield charges $200 an hour. Not so hard to make a decision about that one, now is it?





70. Be a bargain wedding photographer

Photographer Ashley Macknica, 26, and her boyfriend, Joel Barhamand, cashed in on their social circle’s engagements, volunteering to shoot their nuptials. The two set up A Couple of Cameras (acoupleofcameras.com) and now photograph about eight weddings a year at $3,000 a pop. “We always dress like we’re guests—the more you blend in, the easier it is to get candids,” explains Macknica. If your friends aren’t tying the knot, scrape together $360 to post a profile on the heavily trafficked Wedding Photography Directory (weddingphotographydirectory.com).



71. Participate in medical or psychological studies

Want $1,000 to eat strawberry yogurt for 14 weeks? Willing to fly to France for four days to test jet-lag medication in exchange for $2,500? Yeah, we thought so. To offer yourself up for sweet clinical studies like these, check outclinilabs.net, which focuses on projects in New York, or clinicaltrials.gov, a National Institutes of Health website that lists studies going on across the country.



72. Apply for grants

Foundations give grants to everyone from filmmakers working on civil-justice projects ($2,500 from the Center for Alternative Media and Culture) to architecture students in New York City ($7,500 from the Center for Architecture Foundation). For $9.95 a month, search the Foundation Center’s online database of grants for individuals (gtionline.fdncenter.org/) to find the ones that apply to you.



73. Donate eggs

Since the economy soured, the number of women looking to cash in on the potentially lucrative trade of egg donation has jumped as much as 30 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. At the Columbia University Center for Women’s Reproductive Care (1790 Broadway at Columbus Circle, 866-GIVE-EGG), healthy, nonsmoking women are compensated $8,000. The process requires three weeks of extensive hoops, including examination of genetic and reproductive histories and infectious-disease screening, a month of hormone treatment, plus the actual surgery. But the pay makes the going rate for sperm donation—$50 to $75—look pretty wimpy.



74. Use your apartment as a set

You can make $500 to $10,000 a day renting your place as a location for a movie, TV show, magazine or commercial shoot. List your apartment with the CORE Group (417 Fifth Ave between 37th and 38th Sts; 212-726-0701, coregroupnyc.com), a real-estate agency that specializes in locations. “We get calls looking for high-end apartments that could be a rock star’s in a movie,” says agent Michelle Churchill. “But we also get calls saying, ‘We need a place that looks like a dump above a storefront.’?” There’s no fee to list and CORE helps you work out the details, like making sure there’s parking for production trucks, and that your co-op board or landlord is cool with it.



75. Ghostwrite someone's best-seller

Find representation with 2M Communications (212-741-1509, 2mcommunications.com). Agent Madeleine Morel recently opened a résumé from a writer for a major financial publication just as she received a call from a publisher looking to work with a financial expert. Your break could be next. Paychecks tend to be $30,000 to $100,000 a book. Submit letter and résumé by mail.
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  • EU MEPs back single immigration work and residence permit

The European Union Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee (CLC) is backing a single permit directive which will allow citizens of non-EU countries obtain a work and residence permit through a "one-stop shop". The CLC directive is in keeping with the European Union's proposed single permit blue card immigration scheme for the European Union.

Non-EU citizens living and working in a European country under this directive will be allowed to travel freely between member states and will give them equal rights to EU nationals in many areas. The equality measures cover pay, working hours, social security, etc.

The European Union member state will have the right to decide whether an application for a single permit should be lodged in a non-EU country or within the member state. If the application is not lodged in a non-EU country, employers will be required to apply for the worker's permit.

The CLC directive coincides with the European Union's proposed blue card immigration scheme, a single EU permit with some similarities to the United States green card. The US Green Card is a permanent visa; The EU Blue Card in comparison is a termpoary visa.

The EU blue card would allow non-EU citizens to live and work in the European Union, with the ability, after a certain period of time, to take a job in another member state. Blue card visa holders will also be allowed to bring immediate family members with them. It remains to be seen how successful the EU Blue Card will be in practice. If it proves to be too difficult to come under the EU Blue Card scheme it may have limited success.

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  • Ireland successful in attracting foreign immigrant researchers.

According to an article in the Irish Times, Ireland with its relatively open immigration system is more successful in attracting foreign researchers than other European Union countries.

Conor O'Carroll, research director for the Irish Universities Association, said that about 35 percent of PhD students and 38 percent of researchers at major universities in Ireland are foreign. About half of these are from outside the EU, mostly from India, China, and the United States.
Green Card remains popular despite reduction in visa duration

"Recent data from the Irish universities study have shown that it is the quality of institutions and research that is attracting students and researchers here," O'Carroll stated.

Immigrating to the EU in general is relatively easy for scientific researchers, due to fast-track immigration schemes adopted by member nations and the establishment of an EU-wide network of support for third country researchers. However, mobility within the EU is still an issue. Each Country in the EU has it's own immigration system. In comparison the United States is one Country, has one immigration system, and has the largest economy in the World.

"International mobility is now a cornerstone of EU policy," O'Carroll wrote, perhaps alluding to the EU blue card initiative, a plan to make immigration easier and more unified across the 27 member nations for non-EU citizens. The blue card, which has some similarities to the United States green card scheme, would allow third-country nationals and their families to live and work in the EU in highly skilled occupations and enable them to move between member states.

O'Carroll feels that Europe's aspirations for becoming a beacon of scientific research will depend on how it compares to the United States, which is seen as the leader in scientific research.

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  • Sweden targets Indian skilled workers

Sweden is adjusting its immigration policy to allow both high and low skilled workers from outside the EU easier access to the Swedish labour market.

The new policy, which is due to be implemented in December, will place no limit on the amount of workers coming from a single country and will increase the period for which a work permit is valid from one to two years.
According to Tobias Billstrom, Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy, the changes will constitute one of the most profound reforms to immigration policy in several decades. It comes at a time when Sweden is facing severe labour shortages and has a significant need for doctors, nurses, electricians, engineers, IT professionals and welders.

Indian nationals are by far the biggest non-EU migrant group living and working in Sweden and Billstrom chose to announce the changes during a seminar held at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

He went on to say that "once the new rules are in place, an employer who is not able to meet labour needs through recruitment in Sweden or in the European Union will be able to recruit labour from any other country."

Foreign workers will be able to bring their families with them to Sweden and, after four years of living and working there, would have the right to apply for permanent residence.

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  • France, Spain and Italy back European Union blue card


The European Commission's recent proposal for a "blue card" to attract highly skilled talent from outside the European Union has garnered some unlikely supporters.

France, Italy and Spain, the southern EU states most affected by illegal immigration, are backing the plan.

"We need to have integrated (EU) policies, not only in fighting illegal immigration but also ... to channel in an orderly fashion immigrants who come to work on the EU territory," said Spanish Secretary of State for Migration, Maria Consuelo Rumi Ibanez.

France's ambassador to the EU also praised the blue card as a move forward in attracting highly skilled migrants to the 27-member bloc. Italy also supports the plan.

However, Austria kept the proposal at arms length, with Interior Minister Gunter Platter stating that his nation "should exercise due caution not to produce unwished for further migratory flows."

He said that each EU nations should be responsible in determining the amount of immigration into their countries and that preference should be given to EU workers.

Finland Immigration Minister Astrid Thors wondered how a scheme could work which -- as one of its main features -- allows a highly skilled migrant to move from one EU nation to another, when each EU state wants to control the amount of migration over its borders.

Franco Frattini of the European Commission stated that highly skilled migrants only accounted for 0.9 percent of the EU labor force, compared with 9.9 percent in Australia and 3.5 percent in the United States.

The blue card, inspired by the US green card, would require a qualified highly skilled migrant to have a job offer for at least one year, a salary three times the local minimum wage, and health insurance. It would be valid for an renewable period of two years. After two years, a blue card holder could move to another EU state

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