Top Ten Careers of the 21st Century

10. Amateur Filmographer

With the advent of sites like atomfilms, metacafe and Revver, you can make some decent cash making your own web video. For example, I've read articles suggesting that the Coke and Mentos videos have made tens of thousands of dollars in revenue.

However, the traffic to revenue ratio is surprisingly poor, regardless of your video. It's roughly 1 dollar for every thousand hits. That means that in order to earn a steady stream of income, you need to receive millions of pagehits.

9. House-Flipper

Right now, the real estate market has cooled off a bit, which is why I put this higher on the list. However, with the right crew and organizational skills, you can turn a great profit by purchasing houses for short-term profits. Especially in areas where growth is rabid, such as Chicago and New York.

In the 21^st Century, credit itself has become a commodity and housing is bought largely on credit.

8. Permanent College Student

You've seen the reports on levels of income vs. education, right? You've probably also seen the sky-rocketing cost of a college education. Permanent students rack up the debt so that we can have a higher intellectual rating as a nation. Thanks for making the sacrifice, guys.

7. Barista

Some might say that the Barista has a loser job. With the popularity of coffee shops, the barista is a combination of a bartender, penny-psychologist, financial advisor, social worker, and business professional. There's a big reason why coffee companies have the benefits they do; they want to keep the best baristas around.

Secondly, there is a large amount of social interaction that occurs in a coffee shop. As a barista, you have access to a near unlimited amount of dates! Customers tend to develop crushes on baristas. And, you can always make great new friends.

6. Massage Therapist

We live in a highly industrialized society; it's no surprise that people are stressed out. Massage pays well, and if you can find the right employer, the opportunities are endless.

Massage therapy is also an easily-learned trade skill - the schooling is not as lengthy when compared to other trade professions.

5. House-husband

Now that women occupy a higher place in the economic ladder, it's becoming trendier for Dads to stay at home and raise the kids. The other day, I saw a dad in the supermarket, walking around with his toddler and a six-pack of olde style. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised.

4. Janitor with a PhD

It's the current trend to be over-qualified for a position. You may know a few of these characters, the construction worker who can spout Shakespeare, the lunch lady with a geology degee, the musicologist who moonlights as a taxi-cab driver. These hardy professionals really prove, you love what you do. And to them, being blue-collar is cool.

3. Graphic Designer / Social Network profiler

Some of the highest-paying websites are the myspace layouts websites. Since myspace is the top 3rd most popular website currently (according to alexa.com), it only makes sense that a cottage industry would evolve around designing and improving profiles.

Graphic design as an industry is generally tending towards specialty products (where the design is as much of a selling point as the function), this is the new career of the artiste. What people want is an aesthetic - as the world becomes more globalized, and unique identity become more valuable - the graphic designers will decide where that aesthetic is headed.

2. Professional Blogger

If you can make money from blogging, more power to you. I know a few people who make a few dollars from adsense, chitika, and the other ad-placement software. I also know people who don't have to work because of their blog-revenue. In the 21st century, the pen is RICHER than the sword.

1. Web Entrepreneur

Have you ever seen the paystubs from digg, plentyoffish, and youtube? You can actually look it up online, simply google "dotcom millionaires 2008". It's ridiculous. Imagine $300,000 net income per month. If you can make a successful website, you can make millions in advertising revenue. It's incredible.