Business Opportunities Weblog

August 14, 2006 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

An 18-year-old Nebraska student is auctioning off 10% of his future earnings in an attempt to pay his college tuition.

He has figured that he will need $65,000 to become a Software Engineer. The payback: 10% of his future earnings for each year, until the lump sum paid + 10% is achieved.

According to his eBay auction listing, “That breaks down to something like this… with the average salary of a Software Engineer being 80,000 that would mean you would get 8,000 a year for 8.125 years and to top that another 8,000 (For final Extra %10) making your total revenue: $73,000 USD.”

This is not the first time a student has come up with a clever way to finance their college education. Back in pre-Internet 1987, Mike Hayes figured just about anyone could spare a penny, so he brazenly asked everyone for one.

He wrote to Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene, asking him to request each of his readers send Hayes a penny. The notion tickled the veteran columnist’s fancy enough that he was willing to go along with it.

In less than a month, the “Many Pennies for Mike” fund was up to the equivalent of 2.3 million pennies. Donations were received from every state in the United States, plus Mexico, Canada, and the Bahamas. Hayes ended up with the $28,000 he’d set out to get.

Whatever happened to him?

He went on to earn his degree in food science from the University of Illinois. As for why his idea worked: ”I didn’t ask for a lot of money,” Hayes said. ”I just asked for money from a lot of people.”

Photo by skez.

In Ebay & Online Auctions, Education, Ideas, Marketing | 1 Comment