16 Weird Jobs That Pay Well

It is not uncommon to wonder what the weird jobs that pay well are, especially since some are quite enviable (others, not so much). When choosing your trade, creativity goes a long way, it is important to be ingenious if you want to earn good money doing weird stuff. Some of these trades are easy, some are not, but most of these are Easy Jobs that Pay Well Without a Degree, so keep reading, maybe you can pick up some ideas!

To put this ranking together I researched the subject on websites such as Forbes, LifeHack, and IJR, and chose the most interesting trades. Also, I decided to mix it up a little by throwing in a few examples of my consideration as well. I took into account not only pay, but also oddness and level of distastefulness, since some weird jobs are as enviably pleasurable as others are disgusting (although they might pay the same). Even though the latter cannot be measured, I think you’ll agree with me there’s a sort of common-sense-o-meter to the task.

In my view, weird jobs can be split into three categories: there’s awesome, there’s yucky, and there’s original. To exemplify: Diving in sewage (60,000 a year), yucky; Ice-Cream taster (56,000 a year), awesome; hired mourner (almost 60 dollars an hour), original.  Some of them are also pretty scary. Now that you’ve had your own little taste of these extremely eccentric jobs you’re probably curious to see what comes next, so keep reading and find out!

16. Part time drug dealer: $14,400 a year

As long as drugs remain illegal, being a dealer, that ranks 16th in our list of weird jobs that pay well is a good trade to make some extra money. I’m not talking about full-blown gangsta stuff; just selling weed can earn you up to 14,400 a year. In a lower scale level, many college students do this to complement their steady job salary and help make ends meet. It’s not by-the-book, but it sure makes a lot of financial sense.

15. Barra Brava (Hooligan): $1,900 a month

I’m from Argentina, the land of Maradona and Messi; the land of Football (you know, the real kind). We are a country famous for our meat and corruption in all levels possible, and football is no different. High-range Barra Bravas (our term for hooligans) get payed a lot of money for, well… a lot of things, in great part illegal. In this video you can watch a hoard of barra bravas raiding the streets, sacking shops, shooting flares, breaking crap, and so on. You think that’s a coincidence? That they just went crazy by chance? Heck no, there’s people getting paid to incite that, and they earn up to 1900 Dollars a month, which in our currency is a sh*tload of money, and it happens in many other Latin American countries as well. And now, let’s see what else we have in our list of weird jobs that pay well.

14. Water Slide Tester: $34,000 a year

Even though it sounds fun, I definitely couldn’t do it. For a while it’d be ok, but I’d eventually get seasick and puke. Also, I’m kind of a chicken, I already have a hard time going on waterslides as it is, there’s not a chance I’m going to be the one TESTING them. It all sounds actually quite dangerous.

13. Sex Toy Tester: $39,000 a year

Apparently, you can make up to 39k a year by daily masturbating with different sex toys. No wonder that this is in our list of weird jobs that pay well. Let’s tell it like it is, though: this is more of a job for single people; it must really take all your sexual energy out of you. Still, it’s great to get paid for doing –with better instruments- something you’re going to do anyway.

12. Crime Scene Cleaner: $39,000 a year

The most important requisite for this job that ranks 12th in our list of weird jobs that pay well is to have a strong stomach, and no trouble with nightmares, but hey, it pays 39k a year. No one had paid much attention to this profession until we all got acquainted with it through to the TV show Dexter, where the guy also happened to be a serial killer, so it didn’t really give the trade a good name.

12. Psychic: $41,000 a year

Earning 41k a year for selling mumbo jumbo to strangers seems like quite a win to me. As you can probably tell, I don’t believe in this trade, but I do think this job carries a great responsibility, a bad psychic can be a very dangerous thing. People who purchase this services actually believe in what they’re buying and their life-altering decisions are heavily influenced by it.

10. Embalmer: $41,490 a year

If you’re not squeamish about dead bodies, then this is a good job opportunity. These people get the deceased ready for funeral services, a task that includes such things as: “removing blood and replacing it with embalming fluid, performing complex reconstruction to disguise damage, and applying makeup to provide a peaceful, relaxing appearance”. Yucky, but well reworded.

9. Fake Executive: $1,000 a week

A very original and slightly morally questionable way to make money. There are companies in China who strategically try to fool their competition into believing that they are broadly connected with the western world by hiring every-day-guys from the U.S. (and other countries in Occident) and having them pretend to be company employees. These people get paid to attend conferences and events, and blab about things they really know nothing about, but as said here: “If you’re a white guy in China and you own a suit — Congratulations! You’re hired.”

8. Professional Bridesmaid: $1,000 a day

For just 1000 dollars a day you can get a stranger to organize your bachelorette party, help with wedding plans, and smile at you while very nicely telling you to cool your sh*t and walk down that aisle; she will also write your vows for an extra 175. The website states: “Hiring a bridesmaid doesn’t mean you’re renting a friend for the day”, making it sound suspicious like it’s the opposite. However phony I find it, the service actually sounds extremely practical, efficient, and a great example of originality when choosing weird jobs that pay well.

7. Fortune Cookie Writer: $28,000 – $75,000

I don’t know who you are, but you’re my hero. You get paid to pretend to be a Chinese wise man and troll millions with misleading ramblings, and it’s completely anonymous. I’d love to be able to mess with people like that.

As you can see here, there are some very interesting messages people have found in fortune cookies. I wonder if they even really check what you’ve written, because you have to make so many. If it were up to me, I would casually slip a “Suck a d*ck” in there, and see what happens.

6. Pet Food Taster: $30,000 – $75,000 a year

Remember when I said there were yucky jobs? Well, this is one on our list of weird jobs that pay well is one of them. I’m not sure how you end up here, maybe you got declined from ice-cream tasting university, but the truth is you really need a strong stomach for this job, or very, very strange taste. In any case, it pays up to 75k a year, so it might be worth it.

5. Stunt Double: $70,000 a year

These people risk their lives on the daily basis so that someone else can look like a total badass in front of the whole world, whereas they’re probably going to be buried in a nameless grave. Their existence, however, has helped Hollywood avoid industry-collapsing lawsuits. Imagine if Vin Diesel had been killed during the filming of XXX instead of his double it would’ve been bye-bye Paramount Pictures forever.

4. Golf Ball Diver: $50,000 – $100,000

Personally, I’ve never played golf a day in my life, but I have seen endless movie scenes where the ball falls into the lake and everyone’s like “aww, too bad, dude. Now you’ll never marry my daughter.”, and every time I’ve wondered about the ball. I know golf is mostly a rich people sport, but it seems like a ridiculous waste of money to let balls sink to the bottom of a lake. Well, it’s not, because there’s someone being paid up to 100,000 Dollars a year a year to dive in and retrieve them. Imagine just how many balls must fall in there annually for this to be profitable. And now, let’s see the top three entries in our list of weird jobs that pay well.

3. Body Part Model: $75,000 a year

Making 1,000 dollars in one afternoon by standing still and having someone take pictures of your hands ranks third in our list of weird jobs that pay well. It’s a total win. It’s not a hard trade to learn, so if you’ve got the goods, you might as well make something out of them; I bet you even get manny-pedi discounts everywhere! In fact, you need to take extremely good care of whatever body part you are modeling (wear gloves, comfortable shoes, don’t do dishes, frequently visit the dentist, etc.)

2. Snoop Dogg’s Blunt-Roller: $100,000 a year

Yes, this is a thing, and yes, it pays that much. A life-long of smoking weed finally paid off!

I’m not sure if Snoopy’s too busy or too lazy to roll his own joints, but his crew does include a blunt-roller. There was even a contest for the position, the requisites of which were to be able to “roll a joint or blunt faster than Yosemite Sam”, and being badass enough to hang with the big Dogg and his posse. Personally, I’d rather roll my own, but then again, I reckon I’ve got way more time on my hands than he does, and obviously you do too, because, well… here you are.

1. Submarine Cook: $187,000 a year

Last but not least, N°1 in our list of weird jobs that pay well is probably one of those jobs you have probably never imagined existed but actually make a lot of sense. The pay is really good, but the requirements are tough. Not only do you need to know how to cook a decent meal, but you must be the exact opposite of claustrophobic; it’s actually one of the few scenarios where I imagine being agoraphobic could actually help. You also need to be tolerant and patient, after all, you’re going to be trapped under water with the same folks for quite some time.

This concludes our strange, well-payed jobs list. Please keep wasting your time in reading my articles, it is much appreciated. See you next time!