My son, 11, asked me how he could earn $900 to buy new drums (he's a good drummer) - I've offered the usual - yard work, he can sell some of my old electronics on my eBay account, but there's not a lot of opportunity for a young kid to earn $ around here - everyone does their own yard work, we don't have a lot of neighbors anyway. Suggestions?

As fall approaches a lot of wild edibles will be going to seed. People are willing to buy these seeds on ebay.

Another possibility would be flint/steel fire starter kits with the steel cut from an old, high quality file. These files are easy to find at flea markets. You don't need to do any forging, just carefully cut them into 2"-3" pieces and round off the edges. A Dremel tool works well.

Pet sitter.

Dog-poop yard cleaner.

Flower bed weeder and mulch layer-downer.

In general, find a dirty, yucky chore that people don't like doing and do it for a price they are willing to pay.

-Blast

years ago I had a freshman student that set out 1000 orange seeds in a seed bed (I don't remember if they were sour orange or grapefruit), transplanted to oil cans (told you it was years ago) after they sprouted, year 2 budded them to several different varieties, year 3 transplanted them to "egg cans" slightly smaller than a 5 gal bucket...fertilized/oil spray, set up sprinkler system, repeated new batch each year...sold them at 4 years at $6 - $8 each... paid for his 4 year education at the Univ of Fla...

I had class that painted street addresses on curbside for prom money..

aluminum can recycling

regards Les

+1 for Blast's pet sitter recommendation.

Last two years, for our twice-annual week-long trips, we've paid our 11-year-old neigbor to dog-sit our shihtzu. Not a lot to do but feed him once in afternoon, once in morning, and she spends half-hour "playtime" with him each visit.

Money-saver for us compared to boarding, he's much happier in familiar surroundings and she's delighted to earn $100 for roughly seven hours work.

After that first year, our budding entrepreneur added two other neighbors as "clients" just through word-of-mouth.

Wish that was an option. We're in a spread out and rural area, and I don't want to be in a situation where we have to drive him all over the place. Keep the ideas coming, though.

There's also, as was pointed out to me, no possibility of him actually getting a JOB in a store, even though he'd be willing to do that - you can't hire 11 year olds for real jobs. This is incredible to me, as I (legally) worked in my grandfather's butcher shop gutting chickens, making chop meat and cleaning out horrid drain things when I was 11 - that's just not an option anymore.

Keep the ideas coming, I like the "sell your old stuff" - he's also able to fix LCD monitors, maybe I can get some from work and he can fix and sell them.

Ship him out here, lots of yard work

That's one negative of living out in the woods, where mostly retired folk live... not many young ones to do yard work!

at that age I:
Pet Sit
Shoveled snow - used to pray for snow - not for the day off, for the $$ opportunities
Made "stuff" (little bird marionettes) to sell at a local crafts faire
Was good enough (well, by age 15 or so) to build plastic models for pay (the photos on my web site are of my 'junky' stuff that was not good enough to sell - I never took photos at that time, and wish I did

If I helped out particularly well around the house, I'd occasionalyy get slipped some extra $$ - like the time Mom and Dad decided to rebuilt the entire house - gut the 1st floor to the walls, and redo - Up at 6:00am, working by 6:30, don't stop for 12-14 hours - I'm taliking ripping put plastr/lathing, bagging/boxing, running it out to the garbage, hauling lumber, playing "fetch", helping drag BX cable, etc - That got me a nice donation to my "hobby" fund

Some may say that gambling is not a very good idea especially for an 11 y/o, but the son of a friend of mine has started playing poker online once. He's moved from the simplistic "video" poker, to the somewhat real one with real players (everything over internet, online). With $100 from his piggy bank at the beginning he's made around $16K in about 5 months. I don't know about the particular web site or any other specifics though. And it seems to me he was 15 at that time. He used the money to pay (partially) for the college (where he is now).

If he's a good drummer. . . How about starting a band to play at local events and parties?

When I was 9 or 10 years old, here's how I made money:

lawn mowing
leaf raking
chicken house cleaning
greeting card selling
garden seed selling
snow shoveling
service station lot sweeping
car washing
pop-bottle returning (this was before the days of recycling)
pitching and catching and general tot corraling for the phys ed
teacher who ran the town's little league

And, last but not least, buying cigarettes from Jerry's By-Lo
grocery and delivering them to the guys in town who were too
lazy to go after their own. Yes, I did this and they sold them
to me without a hassle in those days. Everybody knew I did
this, I needed the money, and there were no questions asked.