Here's an article I just submitted to SelfGrowth.com, where I have two other self-help articles. This one hasn't been published yet:
A lot of people are looking for ways to make extra cash during these tough economic times, and most of them have considered going the usual routes, including borrowing money, working a second or part-time job, selling household items on eBay or through Craigslist, and so on. A few years ago a friend of mine and I discussed investing in vending machines and setting them up around town, but a little research brought that quickly to a halt. The investments were huge, and the competition in our town was fierce. We laid the idea to rest, but for some reason it still nagged at me. There was something to it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something that spoke to me--but what was it?
Then, as now, I was building paper castle marble cascades and other paper sculptures. I was doing it mostly as a hobby and giving the castles away as gifts, but people kept telling me I should turn it into a business. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to do that, because the castles took time to build, and it wouldn’t really be cost-effective to sell them. I took Robert Kiyosaki’s advice to heart: “Do it once.” In other words, build a kind of “money making machine” product that you only create once, and which automatically generates cash. That’s the principle behind stores, movies, books, etc., as opposed to hand-made items that you sell at arts and crafts stores. I tried to think of a way to turn my castles into “money making machines,” but for years the ideas escaped me.
One day it came to me. A week before, I had finished building a giant five-castle Rube Goldberg chain reaction marble cascade that I showed on YouTube. (A medieval crafting company called StormTheCastle asked if they could embed one of my castle videos on their site.) The chain reaction ends with a little door opening to reveal a trinket or piece of candy inside a box. While sitting on a chair next to this display, I suddenly saw what I’d been missing all along: I could create a compact version of this giant chain reaction machine, complete with marble cascades triggering other marble cascades, and I could add a coin slot, with coin ramps starting off the whole chain reaction. In other words, I could create a vending machine for less than twenty dollars and use it as a cash-genereating sales booth display, for flea markets, yard sales, carnivals, bake sales, lemonade stands, kiosks--any kind of sales venue. It, in and of itself, wouldn't make me rich by any means, but it would definitely bring in extra cash.
The vision didn’t end there. I realized that this was something anyone could do, using their own creative stamp. They wouldn’t have to create castles, but any shape they wanted. All it really takes is paper, recycled materials like cereal boxes and cardboard paper towel tubes, glue and household tools (a polyurethane finish is optional). A cereal box works well as a coin box at the center of the display, and it can also act as part of the candy dispenser. Excited, I went ahead and created two vending machines, and even combined them as a single machine, which I also demonstrated on YouTube. I took one of them to a friend’s business, and was surprised by the attention it received from employees and customers, all of whom came up to me to ask me what it was and how it worked. To my amazement, I made four dollars in quarters in half an hour, which wasn’t even my intention at the time. The castle wasn’t even finished yet.
Because the vending machines are beautiful and unusual, they automatically attract people to your vending booth or table. And because they’re manual (don’t require electricity), you can use the trigger setup time to chat with the customers, who will undoubtedly ask questions about how you built them. That’s the perfect time for getting to know your customers and to up-sell other items that you may have on display. In other words, the vending machines act as both a marketing device and a “money making machine.”
