Make Money in Your Spare Time!

I was thinking back to old magazines I used to read as a kid. Somewhere in the back of these magazines one could always find strange ads inviting you to learn the secret mysteries of our existence simply by sending your name and address to the Rosicrucians. Zip by those ads and you will usually find yourself in a section where you are invited to make more money or starting your own business.

“Make money with a portable saw mill” seemed to be very popular, or at least it was a popular place to run ads. One could also make money if they took a special mail order class in things such as sharpening knives, repairing leather, taking photos or drawing a picture of a pirate.

Every genre of magazine had mail order home study schools. Photo magazines had some that promised to turn you into a photographer and sold you all the equipment you’d ever need to go professional.

Other magazines had home study courses on becoming a fishing or a hunting guide. Some ads wanted student to learn to fly a plane from home. There was an endless stream of classes and products that promised to make the practitioner more money or lots of money.

I came upon the photo above while looking for egg incubators on line. It was a book that told you how to make money by building an incubator and hatching chickens. It brought back memories of so many advertising schemes I’ve seen in the back of magazines. The illustrations looked like they were done by an illustrator that was moonlighting from his job at Awake or Watchtower magazines.

Remember the ones promising to make you rich by stuffing envelopes? Anyone remember how that scheme went? If not I’ll do a post on it some day. Things always looked so interesting and potentially profitable, but you didn’t have to scratch all that far under the surface to see the only person that could potentially make money was the person running the ad.