Showing posts with label small business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label small business. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Make money getting golf balls out out of gold course water hazards


I heard about this years ago, and just looked it up again to see if people were still doing it.  You can get lost golf balls out of golf course water traps, and sell them.  I wouldn't recommend this if you live in alligator country here in the U.S., or at the Carbrook Golf Club near Brisbane, Australia (just watch the video).

I ran across this idea several years ago, when I was back east, and couldn't find any job.  While it wasn't for me, it stuck in my mind.  This can work a couple of ways.  Either you make a deal with the golf course owner/manager, to either scuba dive, or drag/rake the bottom of the water trap ponds, to recover lost golf balls.  You can provide the service for free, and then wash and sort the balls, and sell them on eBay.  Or you can do this for a fee paid by the golf course, and give them the balls to resell.  Do the needed research, and talk to golf course managers, if this sounds interesting, and see which method might work for you.  

Here's a news segment about a golf ball retrieval business in Virginia.  There are 3 or 4 kinds of  "rakes" to do this from land, from this to this.  So scuba diving to pick up the balls is not the only method, though it appears the best method, if you're a qualified diver.   Then you can make deal with the golf course, and sell the balls back to local golfers, or on eBay, Craigslist or similar sites.  

Monday, July 10, 2023

YouTube as a business: video creation supports 390,000 full time jobs

Have your parents, spouse, or friends told you that nobody really makes a living on You Tube?  They're wrong.   According to this May 2023 Forbes article, citing a recent report from Oxford, explains that the YouTube ecosystem supports 390,000 full time jobs.  That mass of channels, as businesses, plus You Tube itself, contributes $35 billion to the U.S. GDP.  According to U.S. taxpayer data, there was a 207% increase in the number of people who call themselves content creators, streamers, or influencers, from 2021 to 2022.  A fact that surprised me is that nearly 50% of YouTube viewing is on actual TV screens, as opposed to phones, tablets and the like.  YouTube is the most popular streamer on big screen TV's, beating out Netflix, Apple, Hulu and the rest.  It accounts 8.1% total time watching TV.  I had no idea YouTube was that widely watched on actual TV's.  As for the actual YouTubers, the number of channels with over 1 million subscribers went up 15% from 2021 to 2022, and the number of channels earning $100,000 or more per year, went up by 5%.  For more details on YouTube's stats in business, check out the article.  

Check out my writing on Substack...

Here's a clip of Joe Rogan interviewing Chris Best, one of the two founders of Substack .  Substack is a platform for writers to write t...