Freelancers and small business owners can win $10,000 in a contest sponsored by Elance, the contract work site. The contest asks entrants to answer the question: What Does “The New Way To Work” Mean To You? in whatever way they can answer the question best, be it prose, video, art, or some other method.

After posting their entry, elance's panel of judges will choose their favorite and award the cash. 

Here are the rules from the Elance site.

The contest ends December 7, 2009.

For a completely different type of business opportunity, someone with a bit of land and a penchant for animals might consider raising goats and renting them out as a viable business to begin.

Here's a recent article from GOOD magazine about someone doing just that in Seattle. The company, Rent a Ruminant, rents goats to help clear land, but goats can also be a moneymaker in other ways. Goat milk and goat cheese are popular artisan products that goat owners could make and sell at farmer's markets or local groceries.

 

Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a program that pays you to spend some time doing mindless tasks. Most of the tasks are easy- things like transcribing addresses from scanned resumes or answering questions on a blog. The pay is small, but it can add up quickly if you're sitting in front of the TV completing little jobs when you'd otherwise be doing nothing. And after completing a few boring jobs, you'll become eligible for the higher paying and more fun opportunities available on the site.

Here's another YouTube video contest, this one for students.

Sponsored by Friends of the Earth, this contest encourages students to submit short, funny environmental-issue videos for a chance to win $1000. The deadline is March 4, 2009, so get your cameras ready and rolling and bring on the green!

These days, everyone seems to be looking for work. If you have a lot of friends who are job-hunting, you can earn money referring them to jobs through sites like Zyoin.com. The Zyoin site posts jobs and gives a reward when you successfully refer a friend and your friend gets hired. It's an easy way to make extra cash with very little effort. Plus, you have the added bonus of helping your friends find employment with a company they might be interested in.

New research shows that risk-takers are more likely to be successful entrepreneurs. The study, published in the prestigious science journal Nature found that risk-takers have the ability to make quick decisions under stress, which leads them to become successful entrepreneurs. Luckily for the risk-averse, the skill of risk-taking can be taught.

I've published a new article on the Ezine Articles site: Earn Cash Playing Video Games If you've ever wondered how you could turn your gaming habit into a paying gig, check out this article for some ideas.

A post on the Fast Company website looks at the going rate (and the high-end rate) for being a Mall Santa over the holidays. If you like kids and have a lot of patience (and perhaps a round belly and a practiced "ho, ho ,ho") you might consider this as a way to make some extra cash for your own holiday spending. No wonder Santa is always so jolly!

If you can create the winning video, you could win $500 in the Swedish Boy Video Contest The deadline is Feb 15, 2009, so you have a few months to solidify your concept, plan your idea and create your film.

I've been hard at work writing some articles that are now up on the Ezinearticles.com site.

I've written one titled Sell Yourself to Science  about getting involved as a paid medical research volunteer.

 Take Great Pet Photos gives tips for would-be pet photographers (or anyone who wants to take pictures like one.)

And while Save Money with Low-Cost Luxuries isn't precisely a moneymaker article, it does tell how to get high-cost goods for next to nothing, a topic many bootstrapping entrepreneurs would love to know more about.

Hope you enjoy the articles and be sure to explore the Sweetgigs site to check out the latest gigs we've been uploading.