If you have been following my blog for any length of time, you will know that I have been very happy to find success in making money with my blog. In fact, I just recently started the 30k Challenge (which is happening as I write this). If you thought I had an entrepreneurial spirit, you should meet my wife. My wife just raised over $1,000 in about a 2 month period and then gave it away. The best part about it is that she didn’t do it online (which seems to be easier than other means, if you ask me).

How My Wife Raised a Thousand Dollars

I know that you are sitting on the edge of your seats, wanting to know how she raised this much money. Would you believe me if I say it was easy? She made the entire amount through crafts. Yep, that’s right – crafts. My wife had a friend that was in need of some money and my wife had two weeks off from work, so she wanted to help out her friend (more on why the friend needed money below).

My wife has recently found a passion for craft blogs. I introduced her to stumbleupon a few weeks prior to this and she had been learning about interesting crafts that she would like to make. Before I knew it, she was asking a friend for some tools so that she could make her new craft ideas. What did she make? Well, I’m glad you asked. The biggest success was scrabble Christmas ornaments.

She also made scarves, of all different types and colors.

How it Took Off

When my wife got only a few orders, we next tried craigslist. After all, we had a huge success furnishing our apartment with it. Why not try to sell stuff too? Well, after two weeks of nothing, we moved on. What we realized is that the best way to market things like this is to reach out to our personal networks and also to tell them about the cause. We realized this when we asked ourselves what would make us buy something like this.

So, my wife reached out to family, telling them why she was making and selling crafts. Then, my wife reached out to our friends in the community and before we knew it – it was a huge success. She had over 60 orders for Christmas ornaments (I know because I had to saw each one to the right length) and lots of scarves. Long story short, she raised a lot of money for a good friend.

Why She Gave a Thousand Dollars

So, what was all this money for? After all, an extra thousand dollars could be used for a lot of great things. Our friend, Katie, is planning to spend six months in Kenya to help the communities there with sustainable farming. Katie had spent the previous year working on a sustainable farm through an internship and now gets the opportunity to take what she learned and apply it to create real, concrete change in other parts of the world. She needs nearly $6,000 to go on her trip. Because she is a good friend and it is an even better cause, my wife took the initiative to do what she could to help support her cause.