Do you have a stash of magazines lying around your house that you can't bear to throw away? Why not put them to good use and make money at the same time? Believe it or not, there are lots of ways to put those magazines to good use and get paid for it. Here are some ideas:
Use them as ideas for articles
Get out your stash of magazines and cut out any articles that you might be able to use as an idea generator for an article of your own. Of course, you never want to copy or plagiarize another article, but magazine material can serve as a great stimulus for new ideas. For example, an article on how to choose a good doctor might motivate you to write an article about choosing a good chiropractor. Once you've removed these articles, create a filing cabinet of inspiring articles you can use when you want to create online articles of your own to post on your blog or submit to article sites for pay.
Study the ads
If you sell any type of product online or through online classified ads, you'll want to flip to the back of your magazines and study the way successful ads are structured. You can glean an enormous amount of information about how to sell through classifieds using this method. Which ads catch your eye and motivate you to want to take action? Cut those ads out and create an ad idea older you can refer to when you're ready to write a classified ad of your own. If you have consecutive copies of a magazine, see how long an ad has been running to get some idea of its level of success. Generally, if an ad is running in consecutive issues, it's probably a profitable ad.
Start a back issue service
There are people out there desperately looking for a particular issue of magazine that contains an article they need for instructional or research purposes. If you have the room, you can collect back issues of magazines from yard and estate sales as inventory for a back issue magazine service. You could then set up a website offering back issues of hard to find magazine issues. Some people will pay dearly for a particular issue that has the specific information they're looking for. To make this business successful, you would want to concentrate on high quality niche publications that have instructional information that's in high demand. Avoid buying common magazines such as Ladies Home Journal or People unless they're very old. You could also offer hard-to-find back issues on auction sites such as Ebay.
Reselling magazines can bring in a tidy profit while recycling good reading material. Why not give these ideas a try?
