👻 1 Polaroid = $500/weekend

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If you’re new here, we turn $1 into thousands building these weird but simple side hustles. Welcome to Ghost Business 👻 Your (mostly) weekly email

TLDR;

• Start with $100 for a Polaroid, film, and a QR code shirt

• Charge $5 per photo, keeping about $4 profit each

• Hit Seattle farmers markets with 40,000+ weekly visitors

• Snap 100 photos = $500 weekend

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Farmers markets (especially in Seattle) are packed with people who love three things: overpriced coffee, vintage vibes, and spontaneous photos that make them look effortlessly cool. You grab a Polaroid camera, slap your Venmo QR code on a T-shirt, and charge $5 per photo. It’s instant nostalgia and instant cash. No editing, no apps, no small talk about “exposure.” Just click, cash, and carry on.

🚨 This is definitely one of the ideas I would do to make some slush fund money or worse… rent money…

• Pike Place Market and Ballard Farmers Market together draw 40,000+ visitors weekly

• You only need to photograph 100 people at $5 a pop to clear $500 in a weekend (there’s farmers markets 6 days a week around me)

• Most Polaroid film costs about $1 per shot, leaving 80% margins

The MVP

Buy a used Polaroid for around $70 and one pack of film for $20. Make a QR shirt for $10, or just tape your code to your chest if you’re feeling thrifty.

Head to a busy market or event, smile, and ask people if they want a “vintage photo they can actually hold.” Offer to snap them with their kids, dogs, or $9 croissants. You’ll learn what angles and lines work fastest.

All in: $100

Path to $5,000 a month

If one person can make $500–$1,000 a weekend, two or three shooters can easily scale that up. Expand to events, bar crawls, and festivals. Offer custom QR codes and Polaroid photo frames for businesses who want promo shots.

Hire a few college students, split profits, and suddenly you’re running a roaming analog photo army.

p.s If you found this insight into the newsletter industry valuable, imagine how helpful it could be to someone else dreaming of starting their own hustle!

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Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

Easy, social, and cheap to start. The hardest part is pretending you’re not loving the attention.

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike 👋