Get a j.o.b. you BUM ! Don't you have any pride...or shame?

Interesting. I'd never heard of a migrant worker referred to as a Hobo. So, I had to look it up. Okay, so that is the first definition in Meridian Dictionary.

1: a migratory worker
2: a homeless and usually penniless vagabond



But ask 90 percent of my generation, and they'll give you a definition more like the second one.

i meet some polish hickers who were art students that painted and did that on the road to fund their trip. and have friends who are buskers

tried it in china, but was to nice ended up giving them away to people who gave me free food and accomdtion anyway, (without begging). Would try it again but i work therefore i save. if i was doing a extended e.g several years trip then i would be abit harder on making moneyfrom the paintings, its either that or stripping :/

To bring this back to cycling for the moment, the gravesite of Leon Ray Livingston, "king of the hobos", isn't too far from an Adventure Cycling route:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg...r&GRid=8660925http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg...r&GRid=8660925

Spring 2011 tour, Northern Teir: The budget was about $12/day. The actual cost was about $50/day due to such inclement weather that I had to pay for WAY more hotels than intended! Plus, basically evacuated from Minot, ND after 3 very expensive nights in hotels at scary prices and had to pay $150 to ship bike home. the plane ticket out was astronomical due to the evacuation going on of residents and all the volunteers who came to help sandbag.
ALWAYS hold some of your cash in reserve for emergencies. If you don't use it, it's seed money for the next tour.

Both, in spades.

Actually, I just graduated from the uni where I was a tutor. Not eligible to work there anymore so here I am, waiting for the fall to get serious about the job/grad school search.

Larry, you are a grumpy old man. I know you don't like extended touring, so I'm not very sure why you bother coming to this forum. Please, go away.

Anyways, thanks Weasel for putting the idea well. The bike mechanic idea is not a bad one, at all. Of course, it helps to have some mechanic skills. I was thinking of making money on the road as maybe an enjoyable aspect of a tour, a chance to meet new people. I was giving my gf a backrub the other day and she joked, you could be a professional masseuse. Come to think of it, I am actually really good at it. It might wear my hands to the bone but it sure is an idea. I've heard of temp/volunteer work at small organic farms for room and board. I would like to learn how to grow my old food. Might be an experience, eh? As I said before, I was a writing center tutor at the local university. I have a knack for words but I'm not sure I can monetize that out there. If the naysayers are done, I would also like to hear some creative ways people have made money.

If you have a tremendous savings, and you like to spend big on everything, I understand that as well. To each his own.

What was your major? You can do private tutoring off-campus, if you are tight with your department you might even get work through your old professors. If you have shaky ethics and an English degree you can write papers for quite a bit.

Sociology major, English minor. I'm also decent at math. Tutoring isn't very hard because most people who need it really never got the foundations down. Anyways, yea...that's an idea. I'd need to learn how to market it. The bike mechanic/masseuse ideas are probably more feasible.

Where can temp agencies be found? I worked a temp job once, with an uncle in a warehouse. I got in because of family but the other guys there got in through temp agencies. FWIW, I'm not expecting that others should pay for my trip. That's why I've been living on a stringent budget and getting all the OT I could while I could. Living car free for the last year has gone way in savings, too.

I think this thread was hijacked by trolls and taken to a direction I didn't intend. Budget touring and interesting odd jobs and ways of making money is more what I had in mind.

Jesus Christ, well...no one can say you didn't stick it out for as long as you could. If my budget shrinks to such dire lows, I'll probably call it a day early and get a ride out from whoever's closer. (contacts in norcal and socal)

Hey, you forgot
http://personalshoplifter.com/wp-con...ouac-jack1.gif
and
http://chaitalispeaks.files.wordpres...list-photo.jpg

Sorry...
I've been in the business for 19 years and just have to get it in here...one of my peeves...Masseuse is female, Masseur is male.
Most of us bypass the confusion and say "Massage Therapist."
Just so you know, in many states you have to have state certification or license to accept money for a massage. To add to the confusion, requirements for professional certification/license can differ greatly from state to state, though there have been strides toward national certification.
I have no problem with you getting money for back rubs....just be aware that you will need to be careful, and not draw attention to yourself. Don't know the fines specifically, but some states can be fairly strict.

Masseur*
I had no idea it is such a regulated industry. Thanks for the tip.

Temp agencies: Manpower and Kelly are two that come to mind. I have worked for both at one time or another years ago. FWIW in many of the cases I was making more than minimum wage.

Aaron :)

+1

I worked for Manpower and two other smaller temp agencies between 2005 and just 6 months ago, in both Canada and Australia. In all of the cases, I made significantly more than minimum wage.

Temp agencies are a great way to go.

You can get jobs through a temp agency in all sorts of different areas. One place I worked hired just about everyone through temp agencies ... including the Engineers. In my case, all my jobs have been office jobs.

You can often choose how long you want to work. I used temp agencies while I was in University ... I signed up and let my agent know that I would be avaible from this date to that date, and she got me work for that time period. Choosing when I wanted to work gave me the freedom to attend Uni, and also take about a month each year to travel.

Sometimes you can get permanent work after working on a job under a temp agency for a while. I was offered permanent work in Canada, but had to finish Uni. But here in Australia, after a year in a position with a temp agency, I was offered and took a contract position.

In the future I would not hesitate to sign on with another temp agency.

FWIW, I didn't mean to imply that you were looking for a handout. I don't think most of the others intended to be "trolls" or naysayers, just that a sense of entitlement ran in a couple of postings (you can beg/busk/etc).

Most cities of a semi-decent size will have a temp agency and are always happy to have fresh blood since they usually get a lot of labor-intensive jobs and not enough bodies to fill them. As mentioned, Manpower & Kelly are two of the nationwide (US) ones and many places have their own local ones.

Manpower and Kelly Services aren't just "nationwide (US)" ... they are worldwide.

Manpower Australia: https://www.manpower.com.au/default.aspx

The Manpower Network:
•Manpower and Manpower Professional collectively have 4,000 offices across our global network. Manpower has offices in 82 countries and territories and Manpower Professional has offices in approximately 34 countries.
•Elan has 50 offices in 17 countries.
•Jefferson Wells has 50 offices in 4 countries.
•Right Management has 225 offices in 35 countries.


Kelly Services: http://www.kellyservices.com/web/glo...ges/index.html

Kelly has evolved from a United States-focused company concentrating primarily on traditional office services into a global workforce solutions leader with a breadth of specialty businesses. Kelly assigns professional and technical employees in the fields of finance and accounting, education, engineering, information technology, law, science, and healthcare. Kelly is the world’s largest scientific staffing provider and it ranks among the leaders in IT, engineering, and financial staffing.


You find these by typing Temporary Agency and the name of the city where you want to work ... heaps of them will likely show up. Manpower and Kelly are just two possibilities. Some temp agencies are big and well-known, some are smaller and more local. I've had good results with both kinds. But some are better than others, so you do have to go with the one you feel comfortable with.

Oh, my. My point was not that they're ONLY US agencies, but that they are nationwide in the US. Of course, many of them are located in multiple countries. The point is simply that if you're looking for temp work, you shouldn't have to look too hard. Sheesh.

this thread is interesting to me because I am making money on a bike tour and I never intended to profit from this tour. (I recently retired from the military and taking 12-14 months off on a ride around the US, next week I'll be on the road for 11 months)

I wanted to document my tour on video, (mostly for family and friends) and started vlogging on the first day. I now have 93 videos and last week youtube asked me to be a partner, which basically means that advertisements are placed on the video page. It's companies related to bicycling, outdoors stuff mostly. I just went over 21,000 views, so I know people (from all over the world are watching)

I never edited a video before this trip, and I have basically learned as I went along. I do spend ALOT of my down time sitting in public libraries and other wifi hotspots, and edit, render and upload vids.

The nice thing about this, is I will continue to make money long (perhaps years) after this trip is over. I have planned a 2 or 3 month bike tour, every year for the next 4 or 5 years. Next year I will tour Idaho, Montana, Wyoming on a bicycle tour/flyfishing trip and I'll video it and called the series "Fishing Bike" just to increase the target demographic. I have a couple of other ideas... visiting minor league ball parks, wineries, music and other festivals, etc.

I can see how the right person, or people, could do exactly what I'm doing and do it alot better.

Back in the day (late '70s), I hitch hiked around the country. I started on the West Coast with $30 and had a great summer. I grew up on a farm and asked a few of the nicer people if they needed any work done and many had some ditch digging or pulling brush that they didn't want to do. I didn't care what they paid, when they saw how I worked, they always paid me more than I expected. Bicycling would be harder because you would meet fewer people. But people also trust people on bicycle more than hitch hikers especially these days. If you explained your situation and asked for work, you could probably find some quickly if you could figure out how to meet some people.

As a young man I sometimes mulled over hustling pool - or backgammon or chess if you could find the right crowd - to finance a wandering tour. That would be even more feasible for a good cards player since everyone thinks they're good at poker. But the one time I did break down in a small nowhere town with little to no funds I wound up being conventional, getting a crap job and working my way out of there. To do that time and again, town to town, strikes me as possible but one of the more unpleasant ways to go about it. These days what I want to do is save up a bit and just debit-card across the country.

I used to make enough money collecting cans at national parks. The deposit was $0.10 per can (or was it five cents?) and you got it back when you turned it back in at the store. Anyway the tourists would be too lazy to return the cans so they just chucked them. We picked them out of the garbage cans and managed about $5 a day from cans.

That's pretty hobo and very awesome

That's exactly what I mean. As little as $5 a day would really make a difference over time.