Business.HealthSufficiency

Introduction

You’re on the road to success - Congratulations! You are reading this report because you want information on starting a business, part-time at first, without investing a lot of money, yet one that will quickly be a money-maker. You’ll find a number of them here.

In each one we give the basic concept of the business, what product or service it provides to your customers, and how it is operated, and (if any are necessary) what equipment or facilities or help will be needed.

But whatever business you choose, remember that no business can succeed without your effort. remember that determination and hard work are the mother and father of success. If you supply those, and use the information we supply, you can’t miss. Good luck!

1. Television Computer Pictures

Lease a computer printer and a video or digital camera and a monitor screen that produces large-size, high contrast portraits of customers in 30 seconds, while they wait. You will find this a sure-fire crowd attracter, as the printer chatters away. Set up in a crowded resort or function is recommended. Charge at least $4 a picture, framed in a simple mat, almost all of which is gross profit. Net cost of all materials, about 8 cents.

Hot source: The equipment to do this is available from Sketch Division, 140 Wood Road, Braintree, Mass. 02184

2. Badge-Making

Rent a small multilith printing machine and a badge sealing machine, and using self-adhesive Presstype for typesetting, design and set cut sayings for the badges. Sell as a custom service, making slogans to order, or make a wide range of far-out sayings in bulk quantities and sell them to local gift and novelty shops for resale.

3. Run a “Consignment Shop”

It requires very little capital and accepts goods for sale from members of the public and sells these items for them on a commission basis. You might try a wide variety of items at first, to see what sells best and most regularly.

4. Picture Framing, In Your Own Home

Relatively inexpensive materials with a good sense of color and style and a reasonable ability with carpentry tools, will build a large custom-framing business, since people who spend money on art won’t skimp on the frames either, if they want a good-looking result.

5. Rental Equipment

Be the source of supplies for do-it-yourselfers. Working only Saturdays and Sundays, when they do, you rent out power tools, such as circular saws, jigsaws, reciprocating saws, gasoline chain saws, electric drills, electric planers, belt and orbital sanders, routers, paint sprayers, wallpaper-removal steamers, staple guns, pumps, home cleaning machines, Roto-tillers, and other equipment for daily fees. Operate out of your garage.

6. Talent Bureau, For Kid’s or Adults’ Parties

Using local ads, or your own contacts, line up 10 to 20 local entertainers, magicians, comics, puppeteers and other talents, and supply them for parties, club meetings and other functions. Have a list of films you can also supply for the same, or other groups, which they can project themselves, if they wish, or you will supply an operator.

7. Throwing Parties for Profit

Everyone loves to go to a party, and nowadays some smart operators make a mint running them for everybody who wants to attend. You can too! Hire a hall and a band, plan to set up a bar (if you can get a temporary liquor permit), and promote the hell out of it with ads, handbills, bumper stickers and lamp-post posters. Special parties aimed at a particular group do best, such as singles, or under-thirties, or over-forties. This idea is especially good in college towns.

8. Start a Hobby Center

Make money on your unused space (and maybe the power tools you’ve already paid for!) Turn your basement into a woodworking center, your spare bedroom into a photo darkroom, and your garage into a pottery workshop with a wheel and a small kiln. Rent the space and equipment by the hour, expand into more hobbies as time and money permit, and charge additional fees for instruction in any of those fields you’re good at.

9. Organize a Babysitting Service

One of the troubles most people find is that their babysitter is always busy just the night they want to go out. You set up a service, finding good reliable teenage girls and boys, middle-aged or older women, and act as a go-between, providing sitters whenever your customers want them, collecting the fees, and paying the sitters. Advertise your service, and handbills house-to-house locally being a good way.

10. Make Money From Your Hobbies

Are you an expert at something that you do at home for fun? Then make it pay off for you! If you’re a gourmet cook, give cooking lessons in the haute cuisine. If you’re an accomplished painter in oils or water-color, offer a portrait-painting service. If you’re a skilled carpenter, design and make custom cabinets to order. Almost any hobby you’re good at can be turned to making a profit if you think about it carefully, and decide who could use your expertise - as a consultant in that field, if nothing else. All you really have to do to get
started is to place an ad!

11. Publish a Buy/Swap Paper in Your Town

Get money from both ends in this sweetheart deal. Publish the weekly paper with classified ads from the public offering stuff for sale, arranged according to category, and charge the people for their ads (some operators let them pay only if and when they sell, but in that case charge them a percentage of the selling price, 5% for smaller items, 2% or 3% for automobiles), and then sell the newspaper (suggest price is 25 cents) as well, through local newsstands and by subscription (in the mail). Once you have a fairly decent circulation, local merchants will also pay you for display ads, because they know people really read buy and swap newspapers religiously cover-to-cover.

12. Do Custom Photo Reproduction

Quality is essential, and speed is generally also required, although you can charge a premium for rush service. You need a computer, a scanner that can also process negatives, a photo editing program like Photoshop, high quality printer with photo inks and paper. You must be able not only to process and print every normal size of film from 35 mm to 8″ x 10″ but handle enlargements up to a minimum of 30″ x 40″, and preferably 5″ 8*” or more, and do copying both of digital images, opaque material and slides. You need to ascertain from the client what they are want in their photo, ie, cropping, pasting, retouching, restoration and coloring. You may also find it a useful addition to offer a framing service and/or transference of photograph to other objects (see our article on this skill) to complement your photograph reproduction service.

13. Publish a Part-Time Jobs Directory

Make this a newsstand book, as well as offering it, with small ads, by mail order. List all the possible jobs people can get part-time, especially angling it at college kids on vacation, teachers after school hours, housewives with time on their hands, and moonlighters looking for part-time second jobs.

14. Run a Children’s “Explorer Club”

Take kids on Saturday and Sunday outings. Ten kids each day, to zoos, farms, theaters, children’s shows and sports events. A small micro-bus (rented and, or eventually bought) can be used to travel in. Many parents are delighted to have weekend days to themselves, even though it costs them some dough. You may have to obtain police clearance when working with children.

15. Be an Instructor

Teach whatever you know. Your trade, profession, cooking skills, a second language, woodworking, chess, photography, knitting, karate, bridge, auto repair, etc. People will pay for good lessons in these useful and enjoyable skills.

16. Run a Floor Scraping/Polishing Service

You buy or (at first) rent, a heavy-duty machine, and do the cleaning and waxing of fine, hardwood floors. If the floors are in very bad condition, machine sand them and them completely refinish them with modern super-durable polyurethane finishes.

17. Operate a Children’s Hotel

This is sort of a “boarding house” for kids while their parent go away for a week-end or two-week vacation. Requires a large house, and preferably, a large yard or grounds, swings, slides, and facilities useful for kids. Must be done very responsibly and carefully. Also, don’t take very young children (less than 9 or 10 say) because they may require too much dressing, feeding, etc.

18. Start a Mail-Order Business

Write a booklet about something people really want to know about, print a few hundred copies, and place some small ads. You’d be surprised how much money you can make. Sell modern copies of out-of-print un-copyrighted material or books. Or sell something unusual you make at home, providing that it is something really useful to your prospective customers. Or sell some of your ideas such as #2 badges, #37 genealogy, and others.

19. Operate a Xerox Copy Center

The secret of this is not just selling one or two copies of each original (although on a 300-page original manuscript, that can add up too), but using one of the latest high-speed high-quality mass-production Xeroxes so that you can compete with the guys operating those quick printing services, by turning out 100 or 200 resumes, letters, or circulars just as fast, and probably a great deal faster, for the same (or potentially less if you want to be competitive) money as they charge. This way you have two kinds of work, giving you twice as many customers, and twice the profit opportunity, and with the right location, a chance to clean up.

If you want to offer even more services, and have the space in your shop, as well as the potential customers, you can offer Xerox reductions (New York Times-size page down to 8-1/2″x11″), and Xerox copies in full-color, which are remarkably go