How to make money doing nothing..

There must be ways, right? The lottery? Bank robbery? (i hear the IRA have ceased fire again - any link with a bank robbery purely intentional..).

Well as a bean counter i am always on the look out for ways my clients make money that are easier than my current career choice. If you cant beat them, join them. Eh Rog?! Just kidding!

I am also a bit of a sucker for anything charitable. After 10 years working on a kids holiday, they are off tomorrow on another kids holiday and for the first time since 1995, i wont be playing any part in proceedings. Its a changing world there too. In 1996 we watched the olympics on TV. In 2002 the holiday coincided with the Commonwealth games, so i took a day off to watch athletes rather than children being ill on Drayton Manor's rides. By 2005, the current leader has raised the bar still further. Stuck with the agonising choice of getting his annual fix of charity work, or getting his fix of ashes cricket, the leader of this years holiday is finishing the holiday on Thursday, 2 days early, and going to the test (with half the holiday staff by the sound of it) on Friday. Just shows you. Being good doesnt have to cost anything! Good work Joe!

The charity link brings me to some UK colleagues who are doing a triathlon for the samaritans in Birmingham and Solihull, and who i really wanted to sponsor. But how on earth do you get the money there? I havent got a cheque book, the costs of a canadian to UK transfer far outweigh the charitable benefits (not so charitable after all am i?!). What i mean is, i dont care if i'm giving $1 or $100 (choice of currency so made because i dont have a pound sign!), i just want that money to go to the cause at which it was aimed, rather than HSBC ('other high street banks are available').

Enter paypal. I believe this is a useful medium for paying for goods and services received over the net. Can you really get 'services' over the net?.. thats a different matter. Clearly a lot of people think this is a useful addition to the modern armoury of internet options, as the website boasts that it has 71 million account holders across the world.

So i opened the account, linked my bank account to it, and hey presto, was ready to move cash to paypal for the purposes of transferring it to my chosen charity.

Then when i moved the cash, it said it would take 7 to 9 days to appear in my account. Nice. Out of HSBC now, and in oblivion for the next week or so.

Ever wondered what happens to that money? Well the money itself moves in an instant. So, for the next week, the service provider gets to keep that money, before giving it to you.

People are spending millions on ebay type things every day. So imagine how much money is in those collective accounts. But lets be conservative about it. say everyone has a pound in there. Thats 71 million in an electronic void somewhere. How much interest do you think you could earn if someone gave you 71 million and said they wanted it back in a weeks time? at 4% interest rates (low in the UK, but quite high here so we'll go with that) the annual interest would be 2.8 million. Thats 54 grand a week. So there is 54 grand potential just to run an internet bank for these people to shop on!

Now work out whether a pound is reasonable. I started with $60. What is the value of the average internet purchase? The money is sitting in someones account. You do the math.

Start a web site. Sell things on it and offer a payments page. And sit back and watch the money roll in... and make money doing nothing. Even a lottery ticket needs a walk to the shop. Why waste your breath?! And when you need tax advice on how to account for it..... my mate Rog will sort you out!