Ways you hustled before this

Golf balls here too. Family had a place in Sudden Valley in Washington state that we would be at every weekend and in my early teenage years, about 11-14, I would borrow my dad's golf ball retriever for deep water and walk in the creek that ran through the bottom nine and the hills in the top nine and would usually be sitting on a few hundred balls. The big kids had snorkel gear for the ponds and lakes and could literally pull a thousand balls out a couple times each summer, but I still did ok.

Would take over the ball washing station at the 9th hole and sell them back to the golfers for 50 cents each or 5 bucks for a dozen. Would make $30 on a good day. Carried them around in egg cartons to display them easier and to pack up quickly in case the golf marshal showed up.

Didn't have much hustle in the later teenage years. Just yard work, house work for people I knew and helped around in my friend's store to earn some cash then got a regular job when I was 17.

When I hit 19+ I sold a few Es to pay for my own drugs in the rave scene in the early 90s. Worked a few parties on the door and selling water and sodas and made good money doing that.
 


Slang gum, candy, and pencils to kids who paid me with their lunch money. The kids bitched to their parents about being hungry, parents bitched to the principal about their kids being hungry, and principal killed my operation.

Schools teach ya how to be wage slave, not an entrepreneur, amirite?
 
Fatbat said:
Would take over the ball washing station for 50 cents each or 5 bucks for a dozen. Would make $30 on a good day.
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lulz

EDIT:

Fatbat said:
When I hit 19+ I sold a few Es to pay for my own drugs in the rave scene in the early 90s. Worked a few parties on the door and selling water and sodas and made good money doing that.
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WOw memories of water bottles at the rave scene - you could charge whatever the fuck you wanted, and the waterbottle was in more demand than the E by the end of the night. I remember paying $10 (x many bottles all night)some nights and you had noooowhere else to go. If you didn't bring your own refillable and didn't have patience to get to the tap (if available), you were fucked.
 
mGrunin said:
From 6th-8th grade, had an older friend who had a card printing equipment. We would make fake Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and I would sell them during lunch. This was during the times when yu-gi-oh was the hottest shit on the blocks and everyone during lunch was playing against each other. We would just create fakes of the rarest cards, and sell them at $20-$30 a pop, and kids were buying easy.

Steps:
1) Visit one of those big Yu-gi-oh shops.
2) Always a section with the rarest/most powerful card. $100 will get you something killer.
3) Reprint the card dozens of times.
4) Sell during lunch.
5) PROFIT
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at least most everyone else's stories were supply vs. demand - you were just straight up ripping kids off. brutes.
 
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when i was like 8 i used to go hunting for lost golf balls in the bushes at the golf course - would find dozens a day then sell 'em out of egg cartons at a little stand.
 
I would buy firecrackers in bulk from my buddy who drove them across the border. shit was illegal in canada. sold them in individual packs and made pretty decent coin during halloween.
 
Soupyone said:
Those who are in it don't talk about it, those who were in it don't talk about it... Let alone attempting to glamorize it and impress a group of strangers.
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Grew up on Long Island and it was the same deal. Those that talked you knew were blowing smoke or would be not be long for this world.

Those that came in quietly and had the hard look you were VERY careful around.
 
Great thread.

10-15, paper route. Had a great routine of innocently getting good tips by always having the most inconvenient change most handy out of my money bag. That and providing killer service.

15-16, worked at a gas station and would get my underage friends dip and cigarettes, but kept it to a very close-knit group of friends

16-18, sold bootleg tapes and CDs of a good live band. Worked at a local ISP (sitting on multiple T3s with free colocation... why the fuck didn't I get into IM at this time is beyond me)

16-20, some activities I don't feel comfortable saying in public. Kept it to a VERY close-knit group of friends.

19-25, became a corporate man-whore in the day job and ceased all 'hustling'... until I started launching my own websites and now I'm a full time internet hustler
 
O yeah when I was 16-18 I had a bot that would level up characters and talk in runescape and had 2 of my computers and my sister's running it all day and would sell the characters for $50-$100 each when they were at max point
 
mumblejae said:
at least most everyone else's stories were supply vs. demand - you were just straight up ripping kids off. brutes.
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Hmm..in the majority of people's stories, they ended up ripping off some party, just not the kids. Anyhow in mine, the kids got what they needed, and it didn't seem to make a difference to them on the authenticity of the cards.
 
Oh man, burning CDs was awesome. I was the first person in school with not only a burner but also broadband. I had warez ftp hookups and shit so I could get you pretty much anything available. Hustled everything from music, movies, games, apps, porn, whatever.

Most popular albums get leaked weeks before the release date. Who the fuck wants to wait a month to buy it in stores when you can get it from me right now.

I sold so much porn in school that at a parent-teacher conference, someone told my parents. I got in trouble and they took away my burner :( (it was external). They "forgot" about it and a few weeks later and I just got a faster internal burner.

Also hustled stickers. I had a plotter and I made shit like copyrighted logos of car parts brands or cartoon characters or whatever. I started selling them online/ebay, a lot. It was then that I thought, holy shit, I'm basically printing money here.

I got tired of that, but I decided to continue with that whole making monies online thing...without all the physical labor...which eventually brought me here.
 
mGrunin said:
Hmm..in the majority of people's stories, they ended up ripping off some party, just not the kids. Anyhow in mine, the kids got what they needed, and it didn't seem to make a difference to them on the authenticity of the cards.
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yeah i did same shit, i made them hollographic and they were stupid enough to buy it.
 
About 11 years ago or so, there was this thing called "all advantage" which paid you to basically "surf" the internet with this toolbar on your screen. I ended up finding this little bot thing that would move your mouse (so your computer wouldnt fall asleep) and randomly click on shit on websites I had open while I was sleeping lol.

It didn't last very long, I only made about $800 doing it for a few months and then they went belly up, but I'll never forget I was like 15 years old and it was the first money I ever made online.. and when your 15 $800 isn't too bad..
 
My first hustle was in the late 80's with baseball cards. There used to be a price guide called Beckett that was the bible of card prices and I figured out a way to manipulate those prices on a small scale (but I was 12 so I felt pretty bad ass). One in particular was the 1987 Topps Rickey Henderson which was listed as a common (meaning it was only worth .03¢) even though Henderson was clearly a star. I spent about $250 buying up all of them (had to sell two of my Joe Montana rookies to finance it) from every hobby shop in the area (no internet then), then wrote a letter to Beckett asking if the card was rare because nobody could find them in Detroit. Then I called all of the hobby shops asking for them, but of course they had already sold them all to me a month earlier. I would leave my number and tell them that I would pay $1 for each one they could find. Next issue of Beckett they published my letter and the price of the card shot up to about .50¢. Since I had stockpiled about 10,000 of them I made a little over $3k profit. My dad immediately offered to bankroll any future endeavors of mine with cards haha.

Then I figured out that cards in football (and baseball for that matter) were packaged sequentially, so that every time I got a pack of cards with Shitmouth McGillicutty in it, I would also get a Barry Sanders rookie card. I bought 4 boxes of cards and opened every single pack, writing down the order the cards came in. Once I had the entire "master list" I could then peak at the top card of a pack since they were slightly see through, and know exactly what cards were in the pack. Since Barry sanders was fucking huge in Detroit, dealers were paying a huge premium on his card, and on unopened packs. I bought case, after case, after case and only opened the packs with Barry Sanders in it, selling everything else as "unopened" even though I knew there was nothing in them. I ended up making a little over $10k on that one and I was 14.

Then I started doing a bunch of stupid illegal shit that I wouldn't classify as hustling, since it was just flat out criminal behavior so we don't need to get into details.

Fast forward to 1999 and Napster and like a bunch of other people I was the guy selling burned CD's at 3/$25 and playstation games for $20 each. I also sold prepaid legal on eBay in penny auctions until eBay got sick of my shit and canned me (made about $20k). Then my cousin and I found a site (stararchive.com or some shit) with addresses for just about any person of notoriety and sent them "Leukemia letters" asking for signed photos - which we promptly sold on eBay. That last one made us about $50k each and worked for a couple of years. I got sick of sending out letters and people were starting to catch on and not respond, so then i started taking them to Kinko's and made copies to sell on eBay. To stay out of trouble I made sure to include in the description that they were "preprints" of autographed photos and made me a decent chunk too.

Now I do AM full time - Fuck, I guess I've always been a hustler.
 
Sold during high school
pot
adult movies
stolen rap cd's

Sold during college
pot & mushrooms
 
Cold selling speakers out of a fucking van.

Also selling compilations of nude chicks on ebay back when you could slang digital downloads to dumbasses that couldn't figure out how to find the pics themselves.
 
when i was 8 yrs old me and a friend looked for houses with mango trees because they made alot of mess and leaves on the ground.

We asked the home owner if we could clean his yard for $10. we would gather all the mangoes on the ground and in the tree and go down the street on a busy corner where tourists pass-by and sell the mangoes for $.50 a pop.

made about $80 a day.
 
Ran a city program where I got paid to do murals on businesses, pretty much getting paid to do graffiti pretty awesome.
Sold ginsu knives on ebay back in 2000 for a short time.
worked in a boiler room, (stockbroker)
Flipped houses (RE Broker)
Owned a Mortgage company.
 
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