MAKER’S CORNER
BY DAN WOODS
Make: Money
Really. I’m serious. We’re going to make real money.
I admit it. I’ve always had this fascination with the world of counterfeiting. Selecting the paper, cutting the die, mixing the inks. I mean, if we ever do a spinoff called Fake, I want in.
Just imagine it. Every cash-strapped maker group, robot team, and science club in America will want to get their hands on a copy of Fake: The DIY Currency Handbook. “No maker left behind” will be our policy. Real, honest-to-goodness hands-on chemistry labs and metal shops returning to schools across the country. TechShops popping up in every town. Maker co-ops setting up shop and teaching classes in previously vacant car dealerships. And when Faker Faire comes to town, there will be Brink’s trucks lined up for miles. It’s the stuff dreams are made of.
Of course I’m kidding. (Honest, I don’t know a thing about making fake money, so if you work for the Secret Service, chill.) But we did dream up a very cool way for schools, robot clubs, and ambitious maker groups to actually make their own money. Appropriately enough, it’s called Make: Money. And it’s not only legit, it’s legal! So safe, in fact, even the Girl Scouts can get in on the action. Read on.
Make: Money works like this: when your organization sells MAKE magazine subscriptions to its members, the local community, friends, even strangers on the subway, it keeps 50% of every sale. Do the math: if your group sells 200 subscriptions, you just raised $3,400. No minimums and no maximums. We keep it simple. You sell your favorite DIY magazine, and we pay your group. Plus the top salesperson in your group gets a $50 gift certificate to the Maker Shed!
Since we can hear the gears turning, we figure a lot of you former scouts can’t help but compare this to selling cookies. In fact, one of our editors reports that his daughter’s troop keeps just a tad over 10% of every sale. At that rate, he says they’d have to sell 43.7 boxes of cookies to equal one subscription to MAKE magazine.
And how about that shelf life? The average life expectancy of those Thin Mints is maybe half an episode of Make: television, whereas we’ve yet to see an issue of MAKE magazine anywhere near a landfill. And don’t even get us started on the educational value of reading MAKE compared to eating a box of cookies.
Photograph by Sam Murphy
It’s simple. Your school’s science program needs money. Your FIRST robotics team needs money. Your maker club needs money. And we need more people learning about MAKE magazine. You help us and you help your group. Sell just one, or sell a million.
To register your organization, just send us an email at [email protected].
Dan Woods is MAKE’s associate publisher and Maker Shed general manager.
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