Salary

Average Salary: $85,740

Expected Lifetime Earnings: $3,579,474


This may surprise you, but poking people with needles can be a pretty rewarding gig. Once you're certified to practice, you can expect to start pulling in $40,000 or more on day one, and that's not too shabby. Not too shabby at all (source).

Want to do better? Everything in this business is about learning to be empathic. (Not to be confused with telepathic...though if you have that going for you, please feel free to exercise your gift as you see fit.) Being empathic means identifying with the emotional state of others. As a doctor of not-so-science-based medicine, people will often come to you for spiritual healing as well as physical healing. If you want them to stay (read: keep paying you richly for your time), you're going to need to connect.

Figure out how to do that well (or at least convincingly) while expanding your repertoire into other Chinese medicinal practices, and your earning potential could go way up. The highest paid people in this field are bringing home $85,000/year. That's fantastic when you compare it to the relatively low schooling costs it takes to get poking.