Simple-To-Start Opportunities
ARE YOU TIRED of the nine-to-five mentality? Bored of working for someone else? Want to make money without your boss taking all the profits? Then now’s the time to start your own small business.
We’ve selected 20 simple-to-start opportunities that require little in the way of investment and qualifications:
- Selling ads on videotape rental boxes
Here’s a great way to cash in on the booming video rental business. Contact video rental stores and ask if you can sell advertising space of the cases of their video cassettes.
The idea is that advertisers pay you to place ads on cassette boxes, and the video shop gets a cut for providing the space. The advertiser gets to improve their coverage for a small fee, the video shop makes money for no additional work on their part, and you get to make pots of money without the worry of having to claw back substantial prior business investment.
In other words, although you have to spend time and effort securing new advertising, it’s a win-win opportunity. One bonus is that many clients will simply re-book ads, so there won’t always be the strain of finding new advertisers.
Contact your local newspaper to find out what their advertising rates are, then set yours slightly lower. Pinpoint clients who might be able to reach their target market more effectively via video boxes: pizza parlors, off licenses, pubs and wine bars, cinemas and record shops are obvious examples.
- Mail order
Many have made millions from a modest home mail order business. Find an attractive product, advertise in the right place then send out the goods and cash the cheques when the orders come in. Bingo!
Products can be bought cheap in bulk, from wholesalers and sold on at a profit. Better still, look to the import / export market – you’ve far more chance of finding a product that people might want but can’t already buy this way.
You’ll need to advertise in the right places, so for example, a new car product could be advertised in car enthusiasts’ magazines. The trick to success is to start small, test the market, and expand once you know what sells – and cash in big.
- Distributing advertising flyers
Handbills are a superb way of generating new business, but many firms don’t have time to hand them out. So why not approach local businesses offering to distribute them?
The going rate is about $15 to $20 per thousand. Devise a ‘distribution run’, taking in shops, bars, cafes, pubs, libraries, museums and launderettes, plus business waiting rooms , canteens and notice boards. At all of these places you can leave flyers in person, put them up in windows and post them on notice boards. By timing your leaflet drops you can distribute many clients’ flyers in just one trip.
Another method is to hand out flyers in the street generally in busy shopping centers. Paying a student a small fee to do this for you will boost your potential leaflet coverage and cut down the labor on your part.
- Auto detailing
The average Ford Escort or Lada owner might not be particularly bothered about how clean their car is. But there’s enough owners of quality saloons and classic sports cars out there to guarantee the quality auto detailer – a fancy car cleaner in other words – a healthy income. Chances are there’s dozens of drivers in your neighborhood alone who will pay upwards of $10 every other week to have their car cleaned thoroughly inside and given a good hand wash and waxing.
There are two great ways to build up regular business. Firstly, offer a service cleaning vehicles on your client’s own premises. By calling on people in their homes and distributing leaflets door-to-door you can soon build up enough trade to keep you busy at evenings and weekends.
What you want is to secure a regular booking from each client, in much the same way a window cleaner would. So, offer first-time customers a ten percent discount initially to get them hooked, then you can reap the profits.
The second approach is to contact businesses with the aim of cleaning their staff cars while they are parked in the car park. This way you can generate lots of customers in one fell swoop.
- Children’s party service
As any parent knows, organizing a children’s party takes time and effort. You have to pick a theme, write and send invitations, buy food and be on hand on the day to serve out food and organize the games.
It’s no wonder then the people pay highly to have someone else take the strain. Organizing children’s parties is a great opportunity for any outgoing, organized and responsible adult, and might be a good part time business for a housewife or working parent.
The main effort will be in publicizing the service. Drop flyers through letterboxes in well-off neighborhoods, put business cards in shop windows, and leave them in doctors’ waiting rooms, community halls and the like. You’ll also need a good knowledge of caterers, entertainers, hire companies and possible party venues – don’t forget to leave your business cards with them.
Positive referrals will guarantee repeat business, so be sure to give the kids a good time. Then, at the end of the party when parents and guardians come to collect their children, make sure each one is given your business card.
- Residential cleaning
Anyone who’s handy with a duster, a mop and some disinfectant can make a little cash from cleaning houses.
Do you know anyone who needs a regular cleaner? If not, ask around. Put up postcards in shop windows and put flyers through doors.
Target the more upmarket neighborhoods, as that’s where the money is. You can charge anything over $5 an hour for this.
- Appliance and tool rental
If you’re a DIY gardening enthusiast it’s likely that you’ve amassed a vast collection of tools and appliances over the years. Ask yourself honestly: do you really need them lying around when they could be put to more profitable use?
Renting them out to people who need them temporarily is a great way to make a ‘low effort’ income.
Putting ads in shop windows and the local paper, as well as dropping flyers through local letterboxes, are good ways of making yourself known. It’s also worth approaching tool, DIY and gardening shops. Either get them to advertise your service on their bulletin board, or even better, get them to promote your business more aggressively (by having in-shop displays, and giving out leaflets with purchases) and take a commission on each rental customer.
The best items to rent out are power saws, drills and tools, lawnmowers, rotavators, mulchers – anything that might only be needed once a year but would be too expensive for most people to buy. If you can pick up and deliver the items, all the better.
The great thing about this opportunity is that when you really need to mulch the lawn or put up some shelves you’ve still got your valued gadgets.
- Used car lot
Don’t worry if you haven’t the necessary funds to start buying and selling secondhand cars. If you’ve got space available you can cash in by offering it to others to display their vehicles.
For example, you could rent your driveway to dealer at $20 per car per month. Squeeze in three cars and you’ll pocket $60 every month for starters.
The opportunities are even greater if you’ve got more space lying unused. If it’s a popular spot where lots of people pass by every day you can charge dealers as much as $35 per car / month. Make room for 100 cars and you’ve got and easy $3,500 monthly profit.
- Car park
Another way to profit from unused space is to use it as a car park. Of course, it needs to be reasonable flat and have good access from the road.
Charge people $1, $1.50 or $2 per day to make things simple. If the land is close to shops, a beauty spot or some other place of interest this is an amazing money maker, especially at weekends, during the summer, and in the school holidays.
If you pay a student or OAP $20 a day to take the money and get an average of 100 cars in a day, that’s $80 profit – daily – for no work at all. This is a real ‘money for nothing’ opportunity!
- Tutor
Are you particularly knowledgeable in an art, craft or an academic subject? If so, you can earn a superb part –or full-time income as a tutor. This might be conversational French, computing, playing the piano, maths, basket weaving, art… anything someone might want to learn.
Teaching on a one-to-one basis in yours or your client’s home will be a big selling point, so this is a good way to start. Tell your friends, ask around to see if anyone requires tutoring, put up business cards in shop windows and on noticeboards – anything to generate enquiries and word-of-mouth referrals.
As you become established you can make more money teaching on a group basis. It’s a good idea to hire a room at a local school, community centre or church hall once a week, which won’t be too expensive and allows you to make maximum cash for minimal hours.
Don’t forget to put up posters advertising your classes. Work hard on getting your name known and you’ll soon have a hard core of students and a wealth of positive referrals.
- Delivery service
If you’ve got a vehicle you can make it more than pay for itself by providing a delivery service. A van is ideal, although if your car’s back seats fold down you can create plenty of storage space.
One possibility is to service small local firms with intermittent delivery requirements. They might not be able to afford their own vehicle, but will pay well for a van / car and driver on an occasional basis.
Approach as many shops as possible, offering yourself as a delivery driver. If they don’t already offer a delivery service they can boost sales by providing one.
House clearance and removals are another profitable area. Don’t forget to check your insurance to make sure you are covered for loss and breakages in transit.
- Selling logs and kindling
Real fires are making a comeback, although in rural areas their popularity has remained consistently high which means there’s a big demand for attractively packaged, pre-cut and wrapped logs and firewood for kindling (small twigs used for starting fires).
Once you’ve found a good source of firewood from your own land, a neighbor’s, or a local farmer’s perhaps – you should cut it into handy six or 12-inch long sizes and bundles it up with gardening twine. To sell it, set up a roadside stall, and / or get it stocked at local petrol stations and shops. Even if you have to pay for the firewood, you can add a hefty mark-up simply by selling it in user-friendly bundles.
- Bed and breakfast
Setting up a B&B isn’t as difficult as you might think. But you don’t need to turn your whole home into a guesthouse. If you’ve got one or two spare rooms a handy bathroom, a kitchen table, a friendly disposition and a willingness to clean and cook, you can still make money form looking after guests.
It helps if you’re close to some kind of attraction a beauty spot, a theater, a racecourse, or a historic building for example – but it doesn’t necessarily matter. You could still cater for business clients, people visiting friends, people in town for a wedding or college graduation….and so on.
To get customers, get a listing with the local tourist board, and with the Yellow Pages, Thomson Local and equivalent, and leave your business cards in suitable places. Above all, make sure each visitor leaves, with your business card in their hand, having had a pleasant stay. Their positive recommendations will be the best way of generating trade.
- Weekend delivery
A weekend delivery person works in similar way to a milkman, except they can make more money for less work.
They buy copies of the newspapers, call in at the bakers for bread, croissants and other breakfast treats, purchase milk and perhaps fresh orange juice, and then deliver it to their clients.
This works best in areas with lot of tourists – you can leave leaflets and / or call on them offering your services. Guest houses may provide bookings too.
It will also be a hit in areas with plenty of well-off people. Having worked hard during the week, they would rather pay highly to have someone fetch their goods on a Saturday / Sunday morning, as opposed to going out themselves. One person’s laziness could be another’s profit.
- Home art gallery
If you like art and have a decent-sized room handy, the home art gallery could be the opportunity for you.
Approach local artists’ groups and offer to display their paintings for sale, in return for a commission (as much as 50 percent) on anything sold. You’ll soon get plenty of interest, as local artists will welcome the exposure and marketing help.
Go for maximum coverage: contact the press and other local media, give out flyers, put up posters, hold a cheese and wine opening party, hold ‘meet the artist’ sessions, and change the displays regularly anything to attract new buyers and artists. Do this and you’ll be successful even if you only open for a few hours each weekend.
- House moving assistant
Anyone who’s ever moved house knows what a headache it can be, which is why the move-in specialist will be popular.
Their task is to assist with anything relating to the move, from packing, laying carpets, and decorating and cleaning both the old and new property, through to waiting around for the remove men, dealing with the phone, gas, water and electricity people, and even liaising with the estate agent. You can advertise in estate agents’ windows and the property sections of newspapers, and even take commissions from the agencies themselves.
- Handyman brochure
The first place most people look when they want a handyman – someone to fix their washing machine, put in a new lock, or mend the garden fence, for example – will be the Yellow Pages.
The trouble is, unless a friend or neighbor knows one they are usually faced with a bewildering choice, and there’s not guarantee the one they pick will be any good. An excellent way to help customers and make money at the same time is to produce a handyman brochure and recommendation service.
The idea is to publish a free brochure featuring the ads of ‘specially approved’ handymen. You create an ad for each one (which they have, of course, paid for) and compile them in brochure format. You can do this yourself on computer or visit a printer. The brochure is then left at hardware and DIY shops, supermarkets, libraries and so on for people to pick up.
Price your ads competitively by making them slightly less than what your local paper charges. Once you’ve sold a few you’ll be well in profit.
- Roadside fruit, plants, vegetables and flowers
One problem with leasing a shop is that you have to cover a big fixed cost every month before you’re in profit. No such problem exists with roadside sales.
Park yourself next to a busy roadside lay-by, put up a few signs, and you’re guaranteed passing trade. You’ll need a van or flatbed truck to start with, plus a source of wholesale fruit, vegetables and / or flowers and plants – a farm or nursery. Try to make your display as attractive as possible, and don’t forget to put signs further up and down the road so that people have time to stop.
It will take a couple of weeks before people start to remember your shop, so keep consistent hours – the best times to be around are during the morning and evening rush hours. That way, someone on their way home might think: “I know, I can stop off and get the wife some flowers,” or. “I needn’t bother with parking up at the supermarket – I can get vegetables for tea at the roadside shop.” Once people start to rely on you’ll do well.
Roadside vendors tend to do better in summer that in winter, although many earn enough in the high season to rest for a few months each year.
The great thing about this opportunity is its flexibility. You can switch your produce to suit the seasons, and if one place isn’t profitable you just pick another.
- OAP services
Increasing life expectancy means there are now a lot of old people living on their own. They often need off jobs doing, but there’s not always someone around at the right time. Why not step in and cater for these needs, for a small fee?
You might be required to pick items up from the shops, ferry your client around, tidy up around the house, do the gardening, and do the decorating, clear snow from paths. Whatever, you’ll be offering a much-needed service.
- Restaurant delivery service
Not all restaurants have the resources to provide deliveries. However, if you’ve got a vehicle you can approach restaurants in your area – and other food retailers such as pizza seller and sandwich shops and promise to deliver their goods on their behalf.
You’ll find that most will be glad to hire you (you can work for lots of restaurants at the same time) because you can help them to drastically increase sales.
Set a small nominal nightly / daily fee, and also take a commission on every item sold. This approach will work with off licenses too.
