16 Boring Ways to Make a Bank

2. Just Save $450 a Month

If you’re not interested in learning how to run a real estate empire, aim for as high an income job as you can get. Tell your boss you want to move up and ask how to do that. Ask what you’ll need to learn to be able to advance in the company. Say you’re interested in going into management yourself.

Show a lot of initiative. Show up early and leave late. Get a lot of work done. Be dedicated to making where ever you work run as smoothly as possible in every little way you can. Always be positive, cheerful, sunny and pleasant to work with.

Cut out any unnecessary expenses. Pay off credit card debt aggressively. Eat beans, rice and ramen noodles as long as you have to if you are in a debt hole. Then start saving away $450 a month. The power of compounding interest is such an important factor in this. You’ll waste no time starting to save if you want to take this boring route to riches.

If you are 25 years old and want to have a million dollars by the age of 60, you can do so by saving $450 a month in a tax-deferred retirement account that puts your money into the stock market. Just $450 a month starting at the age of 25 will get you to a million dollars by the age of 60. This assumes you’ll have eight percent in annualized investment returns.

And in any period of the U.S. stock market that spans 35 years, the returns have always been between seven to nine percent. Here’s why you can waste no time: If you wait just five years until you’re 30 to start doing this, you will have to put away $681 a month to get to a million dollars by the age of 60.

3. Invest in Dot Coms and Bitcoins

If you don’t want to wait 35 years to become a millionaire, there are other boring ways to get there that might work faster, but there’s no guarantees. Anyone who started buying Internet domain names in the mid-1990s made a killing on it if they grabbed something good. Take for example, Chris Clark, who registered the domain name pizza.com in 1994.

He saw a lot of promise in the Internet as an emerging technology, and after boringly holding onto the domain for 14 years, renewing his registration every year for $20, he was able to sell it in 2008 in an online auction for $2.6 million. It’s the same story for a number of dot-coms with one-word domain names that someone had the foresight to snag early on before anyone else knew what was about to happen to the world. They include travel.com, sex.com and vodka.com, which made someone $3 million.

All the good dot-coms are already taken, so what now? That was just the first wave of world-changing Internet infrastructure. The next big ones are already obvious to people who are paying attention, but not at all obvious to everyone else, just like dot com domains were in the mid-1990s.

You can thank yourself in 2031 if you buy some bitcoin after reading this article. You’ll have to learn how to do it, just like someone had to learn how to register domains in the 1990s to get rich. And it will probably be boring to you unless you are a big nerd, but the odds are you can spend much less than $450 saving up bitcoins and make more than $1,000,000 in a lot less time than 35 years.

4. Run a Lawn Mowing Service

Perhaps you’re not sure about real estate, boringly saving for 35 years isn’t the time horizon or payout you’re comfortable with for $1 million, and you think bitcoin or some other emerging Internet technology is too big of a speculative risk.

You can just start a lawn mowing service. They say money doesn’t grow on trees, but it does grow on people’s lawns. You just have to cut it and cash the check. It’s something people need to be done, and the one percent have too much money and not enough time to mow their own massive lawns, so they will pay a business to do it.

You’ll have to scrap and work for your first client. No one likes to be the first person to hire someone. Everyone wants someone who’s proven. So your best bet at first is prospecting friends and family to mow their lawns. You’ll probably have to start your prices a little lower than the going rates to enter the market, so it’s nice to give those discounts to your friends and family as well.

You’ll get a chance to practice and get good at mowing lawns. You may run up into some problems that you can practice solving and learn your new business. You’ll save up a little money to buy better, more professional equipment, and after awhile you can aggressively market your services. Again, how to market your lawn mowing services is spelled out in detail in free online resources,

You can aggressively grow your clientele and when the number of customers got too big for you to drive around to all the lawns in one day, sell your customers to another lawn mowing company for fast cash.

5. Work at a Waffle House

If you want to become successful within a proven business model, find a franchised business, get in at the bottom rung, and start climbing. You need no college education, maybe not even a high school education for most of these entry-level positions. Start serving or cooking waffles at a Waffle House.

Tell the manager who interviews you that you’re a climber. That your goal is to move up. That you want to learn your job backward and forward, then move into management. Tell them once you’re a manager, you want to be the best manager the region has ever seen. Say you’ll have better numbers in your store than any other manager, so they’ll put you in charge of more stores.

Tell them once you get to that point, you’ll know the business inside and out and will pool your money with some investment from corporate or a loan to buy a franchised store location and be an owner/manager.

If you make your job your obsession and attack with aggression, the world will bow down before you. Almost no one even lives up to 50 percent of their productive potential.

6. Open a Made-to-Measure Wear Store

There is always a pinch of envy among friends when one of them announces, “I’ve found a store in town that’s hard to reach, but it’s got amazing things.” But selling bespoke suits is not for the faint-heart as it can be more routine and can make your life miserable. The problem you will encounter first is that you will be surprised that the store’s location is a well kept “secret” by other customers.

Because people are chasing made-to-measure suits, most clients don’t want to reveal where they got their suits. In fact, they take hold of this information as if it is a trophy. Made-to-measure is about giving your clients freedom of choice. But you will encounter some difficult customers that will leave your day tasting sour. If that is not enough, you might find yourself staying idle most of the time because you don’t have enough customers.

Who said it’s easy to make money? A made-to-measure wear store is about targeting the appropriate niche sector. Today’s customers are picky and conscious of their needs. There is something irresistible to them about being measured and getting the sleeves, trouser legs, hang of the fabric and positioning of the fabric just right.

However, it can be tiring and the routine can leave you looking for the exit door. It’s not fun taking all the measurements that are required. If the backroom staff takes their time with the customers’ suits, then you are bound to meet an angry client. It is a similar story that the trained personnel may also demand good remunerations.

Most of these shops are disappearing as consumers are refusing to pay higher prices if there is no proper service. There is no denying that the business can indeed be a boring work, but there is money to be made here.

7. Get into Interior Design

People generally believe to find true satisfaction from your finances, you have make some money here and there and then spend less. Then you think you have arrived, only to find it’s not quite as fulfilling as you thought it would be. However, when you get into the interior design business, you can make good bucks, but be ready for some hectic and boring days ahead as there is nothing new here.

Breaking into the industry can be slow and frustrating. Aside from being one of the most sought-after services, interior designing can “magically” transform a dull indoor space into a relaxing refuge. However, you will spend most of your days sitting alone in your office. You might find yourself with no work to do most of the time. To put it another way, it’s not every day that people are looking for such services.

You will also need to account for some financial costs for basic office equipment and stationery. You need to have some savings available to start the business. Getting some funding from the financial institutions can be grueling and boring with their standard requirements. The interior design business is mostly marketed through word of mouth and social networks.

It can be discouraging when you have a small network. Or even worse, you may get unsatisfied customers who can bad-mouth your business. Either way, there is nothing you can do about it if you don’t find other means to market your business. You may get some individuals, corporate companies, real estate developers, hospitals and restaurants as your customers.

But these clients require personalized services and can make your day extremely difficult. They will make you sweat to earn the money. If you work hard, you can find some clients, like homeowners who have built or bought a house, or those who just want a fresh and signature look. Although you are bound to face tough times ahead coupled with boring demands, you can make money in this industry. If you want to give this a shot, now is the perfect time to get into this business.

8. Start a Drone Delivery Service

The safety and efficiency of the transportation system is a big challenge. You’d be amazed as to how the coming of drones has created a business opportunity that brings safety and efficiency to the delivery of goods. When the Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that his company was working on a 30-minute delivery for online shoppers using drones, people brushed it off as nothing but marketing rhetoric. Owning drones for hire in the delivery service industry is not a far-fetched idea anymore.

They are using drones commercially as marketing strategies. The Domino’s Pizza chain in the U.S. has experimented with the “Domicopter,” a drone that delivers pizza to your front door. Other industries are using drones for more serious outcomes. Therefore, owning a drone for service delivery sounds like a good idea. It can be a struggle to get into the service delivery market since it’s a new innovation.

Camera drones are useful in the advertising industry. This is specifically in car commercials when aerial shots of fast-moving vehicles are required. The downside of owning drones for service delivery is that you will have to spend most of your time idle. Once the drones are busy making deliveries, there will be nothing for you to do apart from tracking them.

The current buzz around drones is about cutting delivery times for online shoppers. You’ll have a real competitive edge that many online portals are trying to maintain. But tracking drones could surely waste your active days, so be ready for some boring times. Although there will be little to do, your drones will still be making money for you.

The commercial use of drones will soon be a major part of our lives and they’ll all need upkeep, so a new service industry is about to boom. If you are an entrepreneur, you have only limited time to acquire them. Be ready to spend long days and you might need to find a hobby to keep you busy. The good part is that your drones will guarantee you’ll make lots of money.

9. Open a Creative Shoe Designing Shop

This might look like an odd business idea, but it’s worth a shot. It involves designing and developing new shoes. Through this business, you could also venture with other products like handbags. The whole process of designing a shoe is about the details. The details involve a narrow or wide fitting and determining the purpose of the shoe.

You have to select the materials to make the components of the shoe and the techniques and machinery you will use. In order to make enough money, you can opt for mass manufacturing. The discouraging part is mainly the need to be careful with the details, which could not be fun for some people.

Stocking your shop with a variety of shoes and bags will attract a good clientele. The boring part is that it requires that you work within tight deadlines, which creates a lot of pressure. You will have to deal with customers who, after having squeezed their feet into the wrong shoes for years, have developed problems such as corns and bunions.

The other boring part is that some customers may require shoes they have seen in the shop, but want them to have special features. For example, orthopedic cushioning or features that will camouflage their large feet. These customers can be so persistent, they might wear you out. It’s not everyone’s “piece of cake” when you have to deal with some difficult customers.

It is ideal to have an online shopping option as it allows the business to reach customers in a wider geographical area. However, as the business grows, there is more need for you to be available, which can disturb your personal life and it becomes a problem. Balancing your personal life and business is not easy.

While you might not see tumbleweeds blowing in the wind, you won’t find too much optimism from some retailers. This business can wear you down with its high demands. There is nothing new about this. The customers nowadays are so demanding that they can give you a hard time to satisfy their needs. This glimpse should give you an idea that there are millions out there waiting for you.

10. Sell a Dog Fragrance

You might have thought you had heard it all, but there is more. Selling a dog fragrance can take you to new financial heights if you are looking for a way to make money. After all, some dogs smell awful when they are wet. There is a solution to end that smell by selling a dog fragrance specifically designed for the dogs.

The dog fragrance removes that awful smell from a dog. The catch is that most of the time, you’ll have to do product demonstrations that involve spraying the perfume on the smelly dogs. A dog can smell really bad when it’s wet, so be ready for it. And several dogs will leave the overpowering smell with you for days to come. They say “forewarned is forearmed,” so this business may not be a good concept for others, but if you start it, it will bring you a lot of cash.

Imagine the number of dogs that may require this perfume. Every owner of a dog will want to get hold of this product once it’s on the market. But the downside part of it is when you have to do direct sales and require to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product. This is where the dogs need to be bathed and later sprayed with the fragrance.

In such instances, you will have to endure the bad smell from the dogs which could be extremely boring. Let alone, yourself enduring the smell of the fragrance the whole time you are doing business. This invention has already made inroads in the market. However, the dogs have a strong sense of smell and you need to be careful when recommending how to use it to your customers.

If you use a large amount of the fragrance it can temporarily impair the sense of smell for the dogs. And if they are hunting dogs, then it’s goodbye to their prey, because they will not smell it. You don’t want to get a lawsuit on your door because of the effects that your fragrance had on the dogs.

Your job may not be “exciting.” You may not be a rock star, astronaut or professional bungee jumper, but you probably weren’t going to be any of those anyways. Instead, your choice is between being mediocre and middle class, always having “just enough” and never more. Although it may get boring, you could become a self-made millionaire.

11. Become a Virtual Administrator

Administrators in a company can make the difference between failure and success. The company may not realize your importance until you walk out the door. Many companies don’t even realize they can hire a virtual administrator. Administrators often work hard and keep adding to their skills. The advantage of a virtual administrator is that companies can appoint them only when necessary and don’t have to employ them full time.

As a virtual administrator, you deal with all aspects of administration, which is often boring, and you will do tasks that other people hate doing. Hiring a virtual assistant can save a company time and money. For example, a company can bring in a virtual administrator with specific skills for a particular project. Some companies resort to hiring temp after temp and find this so unsuccessful, they create a full-time administrative position.

The best virtual administrators are at the level of executives or managers, and they get paid accordingly. They are often at the hub of everything that happens with a company. Want to plan a meeting? A virtual administrator will do it for you. They make sure an office runs smoothly and considers all the finer details.

What team can succeed without an administrator? Your services as a virtual administrator can become indispensable to a company. What a company sees is what it gets with a virtual administrator. They do not have to pay sick leave, leave, tax or medical insurance. Virtual administrators train themselves, pay tax, have their insurance, contracts, and office setup.

They know their stuff, which is why they have gone into the business of offering their services. They track their time and use various online tools to maximize their efficiency. Virtual administrators often have some high-level corporate clients and the potential to earn good money.

12. Be an Accountant

Spending all your time looking at numbers and spreadsheets may sound like the height of boredom for some people. However, there are those who enjoy it, and they can’t complain about the pay. They are among the top earners in the world. And you don’t have to be a math genius to become an accountant. Numeracy is important, but it is only one of many necessary skills.

You can work in any number of industries who all need accountants to help and advise them. The training takes a long time, but it pays off in the long run. Some accountants have degrees, and others do not. You can quickly get in on the ground floor of a business by taking some basic accountancy courses and then start working your way up the ladder.

Accountants are always in demand, and the profession is virtually recession-proof. You can even become an entrepreneur because you know exactly how to structure the finances of a business and make it profitable. You can always hire others to take care of areas where your competence may be lacking. It is also the perfect job if you want to live in another country. The same financial principles apply all over the world.

Number crunching is an important aspect, but it also involves giving advice. Accountants use their knowledge to advise about forecasting cash flow, minimizing expenditure, selecting the right structure for a business and much more. They do not just sit isolated in an office and stare at spreadsheets all day. Increasing automation has freed them up to do more in the way of consulting and advising than ever before.

13. Work as an IT Specialist

It may be boring to sit all day in cubicles staring at computer screens. However, skilled IT professionals such as database engineers, programmers, and network administrators take home six-figure salaries. The demand for technologically-skilled employees is on the rise, and highly paid job opportunities seem to be readily available in this sector.

When considering getting into a career in IT, it may be difficult to know where to start. Do you need to learn a programming language? Do you need to get a degree? The technology field is so vast with so many different kinds of opportunities, there is no one answer to these questions. Creative people can get involved in areas such as web design, video game design, and animation.

Technically inclined people often go for computer engineer, hardware technician and IT support technician jobs. Those who are good at math and logical thinking may become programmers, systems analysts or software developers. But a time-intensive, expensive course may not necessarily be the best option when you’re starting out. Technology training colleges often offer courses for beginners, and an online course can also help you to get some basic programming knowledge.

Once you’ve gained some necessary skills and understand more about what area of IT you’d like to be involved in, you can pursue educational opportunities, such as a formal degree. On the job, the experience is significant in most careers in IT. People often reach out to IT recruiting firm to find out about internship opportunities.

But prospective employers don’t just want to see impressive educational qualifications. They need to know you have the practical skills to do the job. Even volunteering in a non-profit organization helps build up practical skills and could eventually result in being successful in a high paying job.

14. Invest in a Boring Business

Every day, you read about hot new startups. Entrepreneurs are competing to become the next Facebook, Uber or blockchain startup. But it’s not easy to find a startup idea you can grow into something profitable. Adventur.es is a company that has taken a different route and invests in boring businesses that are low key, yet stable and profitable. They can become more profitable with top class technology, marketing strategies and business systems. This strategy has been successful for Adventur.es.

If you take this approach, you need to create a win-win situation and think about the long-term rather than trying to ramp up profits in a quick sale. When everyone understands that the new company is there to expand the business in a way that benefits all, they are more likely to co-operate. Staying in it for the long haul gives you more chance of making higher profits than getting rid of it quickly.

You will need to take your time to review opportunities before making any deals. Boring businesses are not necessarily boring at all when it comes to a potential to make money. If you can look where no-one else is looking, you have the potential to create a real advantage in terms of profitability. Forget about keep trying to find that unicorn business. Putting your energy into a boring business and helping to project it to the next level may bring you greater profit than you could ever expect.

15. Consider Trucking

Trucking may sound like an ordinary business. But the truth is, it can be highly profitable with great returns on your investment. You will face challenges as it is competitive and you need a fair amount of startup capital. You will need to work hard to stand out from the competition. If you’re prepared for any event, you will be able to stay ahead and make some good profit.

The mindset that you will need to succeed is to be a businessman first and a trucker second. The trucks are only a tool to make you profits. You need to think about customer satisfaction, accounting, legal concerns and more if you want to be successful. Many trucking businesses fail because they think it’s enough to buy some trucks and keep them running.

However, a successful trucking business runs on efficiency. The first challenge is to buy or lease the right equipment. It can be costly, but an old truck will break down frequently and cost you more in the long run. Once you have your trucks, you need to find customers. Using load boards helps you get clients but they are competitive.

You have to quote rock bottom prices. So it’s always more profitable to build up your customers who repeatedly use your services. It is expensive if a truck gets involved in an accident, so make sure you are adequately covered for such events.

Other expenses like repairs and fuel costs happen regularly. And if your company is growing rapidly, you need to make sure that expenses don’t get ahead of revenues. Cash flow is the downfall of many a business.

16. Become a Plumber

Plumbing is hardly an exciting profession. It’s far removed from being an astronaut or a rock star. It may be a dirty job that no-one else wants to do, but those who work in industrial and commercial settings can earn a great deal of money. The demand for plumbers is always there, no matter how technologically advanced the world becomes.

Plumbers don’t need a college degree, but they do go through years of training to become fully licensed. They typically spend many years as paid apprentices where they pick up all the tricks of the trade. Surprisingly, they need a good grasp of math because they often have to measure and calculate. Most of them belong to unions that act somewhat like an employment hub. Companies negotiate contracts with unions who then match members with jobs.

Plumbing has a problem-solving aspect to it. And specializing in offering solutions to certain problems could provide a way to increase your income. All plumbers should be able to replace a flapper in a toilet sink or change an angle stop under a sink. However, not all of them have an overall understanding of how plumbing works and can problem-solve on a larger scale.

This is where opportunities may exist to make lots of money. Not everybody has the opportunity to find an exciting career where they can fulfill their passion and make money do it. Choosing something that’s boring and putting in all your energy to make something of it can bring you great success. If you’re always waiting for that golden opportunity, you may miss out on what appears to be a far less exciting opportunity that’s right under your nose.