Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Make Money By Standing In Line
Reading Time: 6 minutesHas your boss ever said to you that ‘you don’t make money standing around doing nothing?’
Well, we have found a money-making opportunity that pays you to do just that – you can make money standing around…or rather, standing in line!
There’s potential money to be paid for just that – queuing for things – whether it be for the latest iPhone, concert tickets, sales bargains or a celebrity meet and greet.
Intrigued?
Then read on to find out how you can make money queuing.
- Make money standing: How is it possible?
- Make money standing: Does anyone really do it?
- Make money standing: What qualities do you need?
- How do I make money standing in line?
- Make money standing: How much can I make?
Make money standing: How is it possible?
Think about the queue of roughly a thousand people which stood outside the Covent Garden and Regent Street Apple stores waiting to get their hands on an iPhone 6.
They queued throughout the night, even though it was raining, so they could be one of the first to get their hands on a product.
Chances are at least a few of them would have been happy to pay for someone else to take their place in the queue.
That’s where you come in.
You can make money standing around by offering to stand in the queue and get paid at an hourly agreed rate (this is known as ‘line sitting’).
And it’s not just people who don’t want to stand in the queue who will be glad of your service, a lot of people can’t stand in line because they’ve got work and family commitments preventing them.
These kind of people would be very grateful for the service you would be providing.
MAKE MONEY standing: Does anyone really do IT?
‘How do I make money as a line sitter?’ Admittedly this isn’t a normal or popular way of earning money but it is catching on.
Robert Samuels, a U.S. entrepreneur, created the website Same Ol Line Dudes, which offers this particular service to their customers.
Samuels started down this path when he was sacked from a job and was looking for new and original ways to make money.
He put out an ad on craigslist offering to stand in line for an iPhone launch in return for payment. A customer agreed to pay $100 and Samuels stood in the queue for 19 hours!
Interestingly the customer changed their mind and decided they’d buy the product online, but they let Samuels keep the money.
Samuels then sold his slot in the queue to another customer, so he made even more money. On top of that he sold milk crates to the people in the queue who were feeling too tired to stand – he had found a great way to earn some extra cash.
He now, as mentioned, has his own company which has several employees – they charge $45 for the first two hours queuing and then $10 for every half an hour after that. It soon all adds up!
MAKE MONEY standing: a uk site that helps you DO THIS
You may be wondering how to make money standing in line. Well, there’s now a UK site that offers these professional queuer jobs.
It’s all thanks to London-based startup Bidvine.com. They are a professional queuing service, hooking up people who needs someone to stand in line for them at the January sales, the ticket queue for the O2, the latest offering at the Apple store and much, much more.
You can register your interest in becoming a professional ‘queuer’ by selecting the right service category here:
Consumers will be able to visit the link and request quotes from their list of queuers across the country. It’s expected bids will be around £15 p/h but, it’s up to you what you want to quote per hour, or per job.
Queuers are apparently equipped with energy bars, water and personal toilet facilities to ensure they can stay in line as long as necessary.
MAKE MONEY standing: What qualities do you need?
One of the biggest quality you’re going to need if you want to make money standing in line is, unsurprisingly, patience.
- The average Brit spends three months of their life queuing. If you’re doing this for a living, you’ll be racking up a lot more time so if you’re easily irritated by a slow moving queue, perhaps this isn’t the job for you.
- You’ll also have to not mind braving the elements (it’s the UK after all so it’s going to rain at some point!) and be comfortable sleeping outside overnight.
- On top of that a sociable personality will help – speaking to others in the queue around you is probably one of the few things you can do to kill time.
- Plus, you’ll need to have the determination to get this kind of work. Speaking of which…
HOW DO I MAKE MONEY STANDING IN LINE?
As I said earlier, line sitting is not something commonly heard of in the UK (had you ever heard of it?) which has both its advantage and disadvantages. If you want to make money as a line sitter there are a few things you need to do.
- Obviously you can join the agency above so that would put you in front of a few people who are looking to book people to stand around for them
- Also, you could offer your services on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere at peak queuing times such as the January sales, times when there’s a new an massively popular exhibition about to go on sale and the next time Apple brings out a totally must-have item that devotees just have to have before anyone else.You could even pay for some ads on Facebook (they do a pay-per-click version so you can do it cheaply) and see if anyone bites.
- You can also offer your services on Gumtree.
- Keep your eyes and ears open for any new chances and get the word about that you’re a body for hire! Tell your friends and family via email to see if they would be interested in hiring you. If not, ask them to repost and retweet you so that more people can see what services you’re offering.
- It would make sense to have a website set-up (doesn’t need to be anything too fancy at first) so that people looking for a line sitter might stumble across it. Make sure you include your contact details and pricing.
- Have business cards ready to hand out. If you’re not making money queuing (or, even better, if you are) you could still hand out your business card as they’re all people who may potentially be wanting your services at some point in the future.
- Keep your eyes open for people requesting line sitters. A few people will use Craigslist, Gumtree and Twitter to put out a call for people to queue for them so make sure you get to them first!
- Contact concert halls, ticket agencies, shops like Apple and the like to see if they can help to promote your services. Try a few and one or two might be intrigued enough to bite.
It’s not going to be easy, particularly at first, but there is genuinely a lot of money-making potential once you get yourself going.
MAKE MONEY standing: How much can I make?
As with many of the unusual money making opportunities we find, this isn’t one you’re going to be able to make a living from, at least at first (although you may be able to set up the first successful line sitting business in the UK so you never know!)
There are, obviously, no standard prices for this kind of thing so how much you charge is going to depend on how much you think your time is worth. You’ll have to decide whether to charge a flat fee for queuing, for example £100 for the whole time, or if you’re going to charge per the hour.
If you followed the example of Robert Samuels or Bidvine you could be charging £15 for the first hour, and £6 for each following half hour. So, if you’re standing in a queue for just five hours, for example, you could be making nearly £40. Not a bad professional queuer salary, aye!
Obviously some queues last a lot longer so you could be making some serious extra money!
Had you ever heard of being paid to queue before? Is it something you’d be interested in giving a go? Let us know in the comments below.
I want to start this,I stay at Swansea
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[…] I have contacted them on both Facebook and Twitter offering myself up for any future jobs. However the first source I found suggesting I make money by idly standing about recommended I advertise my Line Sitting on […]
What a great post! Very useful info. Thanks for this. In our time, there are so many silly articles, but yours are incredible 🙂