How To Make Money With A Liberal Arts Degree

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You did it! You’re finally out in the real world, and like any student who graduated with a liberal arts degree between 2008 and 2013, by now you will have secured an engaging and lucrative career in your field of interest.

What’s that? It hasn’t happened yet? OK then, maybe it’s time to give some of these other exciting ideas for humanities majors a whirl:

  1. Dog sweater knitter. I thought of this one at a birthday party for a Chihuahua who had just been gifted an $80 orange cable knit turtleneck. Yes, you read that correctly. $80 for an oven mitt with a hole in it. And that’s for a 4 lb. dog. Imagine the kind of money you could make knitting sweaters for larger animals! The knitting skills you learned from your great-grandmother and/or watching Portlandia might finally pay off.
  2. Celebrity Dog Walker. Dogs are a huge market, at least in New York City Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Park Slope. My friend’s 70-year-old father makes a living walking dogs for several residents of the Dakota, the building where Yoko Ono lives. I recommend you follow this guy’s lead and spend the next few months hanging out outside Alec Baldwin’s building in Tribeca, befriending his doorman/not getting arrested for loitering.
  3. Erotica Writer. As long as you don’t corner my niche market, Dinosaur Erotica—wait, what? That’s been done already and it’s a bestseller on Kindle Direct Publishing? If you know twelve synonyms for the word “penis,” and can think of something weirder than Velociraptor porn, then this one is all you.
  4. Artisan Candle Maker. I learned to make candles on a middle school field trip to a plantation when I lived in North Carolina. Candle making is arguably the best of all five of these jobs, because statistically, candles are the number one gift in office Secret Santa exchanges. Sell them on Etsy. Perhaps alongside Chihuahua sweaters.
  5. Lemonade Stand. A lemon juice cayenne pepper “cleanse” in New York City costs $9. My roommate buys these regularly. Lemons, water, and pepper are all free, so if my math is correct, you stand to make at least 5 million % profit mixing these items together.

Let me know how it goes. I’ll be working on my Lord of the Rings-themed erotica novel, Hugged by a Hobbit, due out sometime next year.