The easiest money I’ve ever made…ever!

I’ve been pretty fortunate to happen across some pretty easy money throughout my life. I started tutoring my Senior year of college at a rate of $20/hour. Within a few short months I was able to charge upwards of $50/hour. Then there was the time I house-sat for one of the families I tutored and they paid me $750 for three days of watching their TV and eating their food. Who pays for that? Being able to make money blogging is also pretty rad, but nothing, NOTHING, comes close to the time I was a television background extra on Veronica Mars.

My mom really loved Veronica Mars and when she found out they did their filming in San Diego, she basically forced me to apply to the company that casts the background extras for the show. To appease my mother I applied. A few months had passed and I heard nothing. Then, one day, my phone rang. It was someone from the production company telling me I was picked to be an extra on Veronica Mars. I was instructed to bring a nice suit and to show up at noon to an old business complex in the area.

Once I got to the set, I was told to suit up as I’d be playing a FBI agent. They took my picture, made me a fake FBI badge, and corralled all us extras in to a big conference room for holding. Every 30 minutes or so a casting director would come in to the holding area and describe the next scene. He would round-up a group of us extras and take us to where they were filming. Once the cameras started rolling we pretended to do “backgroundy” type things. In one scene I was suppose to look like I was flipping through a bunch of paperwork. In another, I had to pretend I was listening to a lecture in an auditorium. In another, I walked out of an elevator. Highly technical stuff, I know. After a few takes of each scene, the extras were sent back to the holding room, until we were needed again for another scene. It was a long day. Exciting at times, and really boring at others. Filming ended just after 2am.

As I was driving back to my college campus, I realized I had no idea how much I would be getting paid for 10 hours of background work. I figured it would be around $10/hour, so I was expecting a $100-ish payday. Boy was I wrong. A few weeks after filming  I got my paycheck in the mail, opened it up, and my jaw dropped when I saw the payment: $1,200. That means I got paid $120/hour to do nothing more than sit in a big holding room, and walk past the camera a few times. This was definitely the easiest money I’ve ever made.

Why don’t you take a minute out of your busy Friday, and leave a comment sharing the easiest money you’ve ever made. The more details the better, maybe we can use these stories as ideas to increase our side income 🙂