Earn for a living

Can we earn for ourselves with barely anytime in hand if we need to? The first two days we were given the task of going and earning a minimum of Rs.100 on our own without using any contacts. My group: Gauri, Meher, Rajasee, Vasundhra, Shubhangi, Varshita and me. The ideas we came up with, after a session of brain storming are:

-> paper bags

-> decorating matches

-> making doll out of plastic balls and chocolate wrappers

-> making trinklets and chappal art

-> decorating cheap pens, etc.

-> letting children paint our faces

-> performing a rhythm piece using claps and the harmonica

-> dressing up as a mime artist

-> telling a very interesting story and asking for money at different stages

-> selling self-written stories, etc.

-> gambling

-> selling fake pirated DVDs

-> betting that people couldn't make me laugh in two minutes

-> betting that we could make them laugh in a minute, etc.

-> giving people a back massage

-> walking their dogs

-> taking care of their children while they shop

-> applying mehendi or alta

-> translating for tourists

-> keeping a secret or giving people advice

-> braiding hair and giving manicures

I decided to make clips out of old rakhis, this kept my cost to almost nothing and also some stick ons for slippers out of old cellophane and some wire, i sold each clip for Rs.10 and the stick ons for Rs.20 a pair outside Mount Carmel College with Vasundhrawho had made bling cards. We managed to sell the clips and the cards and earned a total of Rs. 260 between us. None of the slipper stick ons sold even though they were cheap probably because this was a whole new concept and people hadn't seen it before. I made a sample and wore it and went to show it to them, people admired it but no one seemed to want to buy something new. I had actually expected the slipper stick ons to sell more than the clips because people generally want something new and different and these stick ons would transform their slippers from any run of the mill slippers to their own unique pair. But people don't seem to be adventurous they want to stick to what is very common. The clips were a little different from what is available in the market as they are made out of old rakhis so that's probably also what caught peoples eye.

When we approached the people we would call ourselves street artists and this would catch their attention and they would stop to listen to what we had to say, some would curiously ask us which college we were from or what cause are we working for and they would be taken aback when we would say no to both. In the afternoon some policeman was walking up and down the college gate area making sure no one parks their car there then there was a minute when we got scared about him shooing us away but to our luck he did no such thing, rather he dint even bother trying to find out what we were doing there. It definitely wasn't easy making the Rs.100 is such a short time. It took a lot of hard work and convincing people to buy. On the whole i learnt how difficult it is to earn some fast money, I also learnt from the mistakes we made.