A lot of people think that they can’t have their own website selling all manner of things because they don’t have the money to buy the stock, let alone find room to store it all.
But there is a way that you can sell stuff online without needing to touch a single item that you promote
Would you consider paying someone to do the jobs you hate doing? You would certainly pay someone to do the jobs you cannot do yourself or find difficult to do, wouldn’t you?
While you may find it easy to get your own groceries there are plenty of people who aren’t so lucky. In these situations they would gladly pay a little extra to have someone do their shopping for them and deliver it all to their home. Essentially you would be providing a smaller, more local and arguably friendlier version of the large scale services offered by some of the bigger stores.
While you can certainly deliver groceries for people who find it hard to get out and about and carry heavy shopping home, you’ll also find a ready market in younger people who are pushed for time.
This can influence how you promote your services as well, since you will want to be visible to the people who are most likely to use your delivery service. For example, younger people are far more likely to be connected to the internet, so it’s worth investing the money to get a website up and running that people can see.
Incidentally there are also a number of organizations in the US that offer to help you in this respect, and for a fee they will provide a fully customized website and lots of help and advice on getting started in this business. The website allows people to actually order their groceries online, and you then deliver them to the customer. This is grocery delivery on a much larger scale though, as it could really take off
If you like getting out and about, this might be the opportunity you’ve been looking for. You’ll need your own transport and it can take a bit of creativity to set everything up, but in the end you can offer a great service to a lot of local people.
A bit of creative thinking goes a long way here, and it can really set you apart from any competition as well. There are countless ways you can approach this business, but you’ll need to keep on reading to find out what they are.
So you want to deliver food from local restaurants? Here is your first option. Some restaurants already offer takeaway options, but the customer has to come and get their food rather than relying on the restaurant to deliver it for them. If this is the case then you could step in and offer your services to people in your local area. Instead of them having to go out and collect their food, you will do it for them in return for a small payment.
Logistically speaking you could soon become quite busy with this, and you might even find yourself picking up more than one order at a time. You will also need a reliable car to use, since you will need to be quick and efficient at getting the food to the customer as quickly as you can (as far as safety allows of course).
But there are also plenty of restaurants that don’t currently have a takeaway option. Could you persuade one of these to provide that option if you were to provide the delivery service?
There is no doubt that good promotion will get you a long way here. You are offering convenience to the customer, but you can also offer one point of contact. If you can get a phone number that is really memorable and get it printed onto a number of leaflets that you can deliver round your local area, all you need to do is urge people to call that one number whenever they want take out food. They will tell you what they want and where from, and you will get it and deliver it to them for an additional charge. The big advantage of this for the customer is if they want food items from more than one place. All they do is call you and you do the rest.
Good advertising will help here. If you can, get some good quality posters printed with your details and that phone number on and get them displayed in all the outlets you are offering a delivery service for. People will then start to see the number and realize that they don’t need to go out themselves to get what they need.
Does this sound like the kind of thing you’d like to do? One of the biggest advantages is that it’s an evening job, so you can do whatever you like during the day. It could be an ideal time to distribute some promotional leaflets perhaps?
Don’t forget to leave a comment using the form below before you start thinking about this idea in more depth.
If you love pets then this is a great way to meet more of them! There are lots of ways you could reap the rewards by setting up a business to help people with their pets. Depending on what you like doing you could provide one service in particular or a whole range of them.
Your choice of pet business will also depend on what skills you have. After all if you are good at painting pictures of animals then you will no doubt earn more money doing that than you would taking dogs for a walk!
If you are an animal lover then there is no better job than spending all day surrounded by them. The great part about setting up a pet services company is that you can work whatever hours you like, fitting it in around your existing commitments to suit you.
Click Here to learn more about starting your own pet supply business.
Before you start, think about what kind of services you would like to offer. If you like going out for walks then a dog walking service would be a good bet. If you don’t mind having a change of scene from time to time then you might consider offering a pet sitting service for all kinds of animals.
On the other hand you might be good with a camera and enjoy photography as a hobby. A lot of pet owners would pay a considerable amount of money to get a nice picture of their pet or pets taken and framed for them. You could either set up a mini studio in a spare room of your home, getting people to visit you, or you could take everything with you and take the photos at their home. The second option is probably better since the animal will be in its own natural habitat, giving you more opportunities to get good pictures.
If you can paint good pictures then you may want to visit the owner and their pet and perhaps take some photos to give you an idea of how to paint the animal when you return home to do your work.
There are plenty of opportunities online as well; you could set up a website selling pet toys and items such as collars, squeaky toys, name tags and all kinds of other items. If you haven’t got the room to stock these yourself find a company that will dropship them for you.
Promoting your business is important both on and offline. If you have a dog walking or photography business then get some leaflets or postcards printed up and advertise them in local shop windows. If you can persuade the local pet shops to display your cards so much the better, as you will receive a lot of business from this direction.
This is the kind of business that will also develop via word of mouth. Start small and you will soon find new clients as you get more established. Ask your friends and family to spread the word for you as well, and you will soon be making plenty of furry friends!
Click Here to learn more about starting your own pet supply business.
And this is where you come in. There are plenty of possibilities for running an email newsletter service which is either free or fee paying, and you can make a decent profit from either option.
The key to success is to pick a topic that will attract the attention of a lot of people. If you can do that you could be sitting on a goldmine
You’ve probably heard the saying that you shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel, and that applies just as much to a business as anything else in life.
If you are looking for a business which already has a proven template for you to follow – enabling you to set up your own business and taking away a lot of the worry about whether or not it will work in the first place – check out the many different franchises that are available. It could be just what you are looking for.
Franchising is one of the best routes to fast business success if you want the reliability of a name that is already known. You’ll also benefit from not having to worry about creating a business plan, deciding what to stock, and all the other headaches that come from creating your own business from scratch.
You’ll need to part with some cash though if you want to get involved; every franchise incurs a franchise fee to get you started, so be sure you look into all the requirements and the small print before you sign anything. You might also consider how well the franchise model you are thinking of will fit in to your local area. Getting the answers to all these questions and more is essential to make sure you know what to expect right from the start.
The good news is that there are lots of different types of franchise you can get involved with, so regardless of what your best skills and abilities are, you should be able to find something that will suit you.
At the most visible end there are the shop franchises. McDonald’s is one of the most famous examples of this, though you might not be thinking of running a franchise on that scale. Perhaps the better choice for many entrepreneurs is the smaller franchise which allows you to sell products of a certain type. An example of this would be a book publisher or distributor that allows you to sell their books yourself
Starting your own gardening service might not be practical if you can’t tell a weed from a flower. But that doesn’t mean you can’t offer to help people with their gardens.
One of the jobs that a lot of people don’t enjoy is mowing the lawn. It can take some time to do if the garden is a large one, and many people simply don’t have the time to do it themselves. Even if they do, a lot of them would rather be doing something else instead.
So why not solve that problem for them? One of the best ways to make money is by helping other people out, and this particular opportunity has a lot of potential.
Not only does a grass cutting service have the potential to net a lot of clients, it is also one of the easiest businesses to promote. All your customers will be in your local area, so the best thing to do is design a simple flyer on your computer (you can use some clip art to make it look more impressive) and get a lot of them printed up cheaply by a local printer. Make sure you get your cell phone number printed on them too.
All you need to do then is distribute them door to door to get them in front of those people who might take you up on your service. You should start to get a few calls almost immediately.
The best way to offer a competitive price is to phone up other similar services in your neighborhood and ask for a quote from them. You can then position your own service in a similar price range.
Rather than offering a set schedule when you meet a new customer, ask them how often they would like their grass cut and what day and time would be convenient for them. Buy yourself a big diary with time slots and book people in as and when you get appointments. That way you won’t double book anyone and you won’t forget to turn up anywhere either! You should also make sure you get a contact phone number from them, just in case you need to contact them for any reason.
Some people may be happy for you to use their own mower, but it goes without saying that you should always have your own one to use. Make sure you carry spares for any parts which may need replacing, and make sure you clear up after yourself as well. Don’t leave any grass cuttings behind unless the customer wants you to put them in a compost bin.
One of the dangers with this business is that you could become too successful. If you aren’t careful you could end up working seven days a week, so always make sure you book the weekends off, or whatever days are best for you. You should also have a contingency plan in mind in case it rains on a day when you should be visiting clients’ homes, so that you can return when there is better weather.
In short this is a fantastic chance to build a worthwhile business by doing something for people that they don’t want to do themselves. You will also get a lot of exercise and it’s certainly an enjoyable experience to be out cutting grass in all kinds of different gardens, so make the most of it!
If you start this business and achieve some success with it, make sure you come back here and tell us all about it by leaving a comment using the form below.
We have all got chores that we hate doing, and it’s not nice thinking that we have to do most of them when we could be out enjoying themselves. So if you quite enjoy cleaning the house on a regular basis, then why not offer that same service to someone else?
Most people hate cleaning the house and would be more than happy to pay someone else to do it for them. If you are responsible and trustworthy, then why not set up a business doing just that? You might get more clients than you think
Throwing our trash away is part of everyday life. But don’t you just hate that smell that wafts up to meet you every time you open the lid to throw in another piece of trash?
Bins that are kept outside get subjected to all kinds of abuse. They have to withstand all weathers and hold all the leftovers, spoiled food and other remnants that we don’t want to keep inside. No wonder they smell less than fragrant from time to time.
But if you can stand the smell you could be making a lot of money from those bins. Grab a peg and come closer to find out more about this lucrative opportunity.
One of the best things about this business is that you will never run short of customers. Everyone has a trash can, and I am willing to bet that very few (if any) of those bins smells anywhere near good.
This makes for a huge business opportunity for you, and it’s easy to advertise since you can simply get a whole batch of leaflets printed up and deliver them door to door to get you started. State your price on the leaflet and offer the customer 20% offer if they produce the leaflet when you arrive to clean their bin.
That is a good discount and you can bet that a lot of people will take you up on the offer. It also guarantees that more people will keep the leaflet for longer instead of throwing it away.
You can start this business with very little cash, since you can manually clean all the bins if you have the right equipment to do so
One of the keys to being a success in business is definitely to start up in an area you have a natural interest in. You wouldn’t start up a restaurant if you hated food, or start selling flowers if you had no interest in them and they made you allergic.
Everyone has a passion for something and whether it is model trains, photography or cell phones that passion could hold a terrific business idea for you to capitalize on.
A lot of people think that in order to run a local business you need to find an outlet of some kind and rent out expensive premises to stand any chance of making any money.
But you don’t have to start out that way. In fact the best start to any kind of local business can often be through getting a market stall of some kind, if your business is suited to it. There will still be an outlay to rent it but it’s cheaper than a proper shop and it can get you off the ground and into profit a lot quicker on many occasions.
The main point to think about is whether your passion can be converted into a profitable business that will attract enough customers to keep going. You might need to do some research here to make sure your idea will fly, but even if it doesn’t look encouraging you might be able to alter the angle of it to appeal to a wider audience.
For example you might have a passion for making scenery for model train sets by hand, but there might not be enough of an interest in that to build a successful business around it. But if you were to start a model shop and make some of your scenery in front of the customers while the store was open, you would no doubt attract a lot of interest and probably more customers as well. You could use your hand built scenery to enhance all the model trains you put on display.
You will often find that with a bit of lateral thinking and some solid research you can find an angle on most subjects that would work well as a proper business. And it might not be something you make either. If you love computer games and there isn’t a games store in your local town at present, why not think about opening one yourself? Even if the major stores sell computer games, people will get to know you as being someone who loves them yourself and who knows which ones to recommend and which ones will work on what type of computer. Knowledge like this will put you head and shoulders above the competition.
The great thing about starting a business around a topic you love is that news of your passion for your subject will spread among customers by word of mouth. Eventually you will build up a good customer base even without advertising (although you should of course do all you can to draw in new people in as many ways as possible; the more visible you are the better).
In the end the amount of effort you put into your business will be far easier than it would be for a business you didn’t have the same passion for, and that alone will give you the determination and passion you need to succeed.
But before you rush off to start making plans, make sure you leave a comment for us below!
You need to be quite confident to take on this kind of opportunity to earn money, because you will be showing a group of people around your local town and revealing local knowledge about the best places to go for a bargain.
But if you think you’ve got the confidence then it could be a real money spinner for you.
If the idea of becoming a tour guide appeals to you then keep reading. You would basically be booking groups of people onto your pre-arranged tours and showing them all the best places to go to get the latest and best fashions in your area. You could stick to a specific theme for your tour; for example you could do some research and find out where all the cheapest shops are to get bargain outfits, or maybe all the shops that are a bit out of the way and are usually only frequented by the locals.
This takes a little organization as you will obviously need to research a good route to take and show them shops that they might not find otherwise. You would then charge a fee for each person to take the tour, and you could also provide a map of the area with all the shops you show them clearly marked on it.
The best way to make this work is to get the various shop owners to approve of your business idea in advance. If you let them know you will be bringing in new customers for them, they will probably be more than happy to give you a small percentage
We’d all love to have a pool in our back yard, but when it comes to maintaining it and keeping it clean, that isn’t something we like to do ourselves. Can you see a business opportunity here?
If you develop your business properly and market it in the right way to the right people, you could very soon have more customers than you know what to do with. Pool cleaning is also something that most people can pick up, and if you like being in the outdoors then you will certainly love this opportunity since you will be able to get out and about and meet new people every day.
Swimming pools are fantastic, but no one likes cleaning them. That’s why pool cleaning businesses tend to do very well if they are run by someone who has a great care for their work and knows exactly what to do to keep a pool in tip top condition.
The first step is obviously gaining that knowledge. You can start finding out what you need to know by visiting local pool suppliers and asking them how you would keep your pool clean if you were to buy one from them. This is a bit cheeky but you’ll get the info you need!
You can also find out a great deal by going online and learning from other people who do the same thing. Jump onto Google and look up pool cleaning trade contacts or something similar, and see how many results and leads you come up with. You’ll soon know where to go for supplies and how to go about the actual cleaning process responsibly and efficiently. Try looking up
If there is a subject that you love talking about, then you owe it to yourself to find an audience for it through podcasting.
Although this is still a fairly new medium as far as making money is concerned, it is clear already that there is money to be had, as some people have latched on to several ways that they can do just that with it.
The key is to find a subject that people are interested in and reach that audience in as many ways as you can by making your podcast available to them
Even though there are hundreds of thousands of newsletters you can elect to receive via email thanks to the power of the internet, a lot of people still like to receive a paper copy that they can keep. At a time when everything is so easily disposed of, it’s arguable that a paper newsletter actually has a longer shelf life, since it’s much harder to throw away something tangible than it is to hit a button and delete it out of your inbox.
But how easy is it to set up your own snail mail newsletter service? Surprisingly, it might just be easier than you think
What are the most important things to consider before you venture into a new online business? Is it the technical know-how? Or perhaps it’s the traffic strategies?
In today’s blog, I’ll give you a checklist that you can refer to whenever you want to start a new online business.
1) Is the market easily targetable?
Before you do anything, you need to make sure that the market you are trying to get into is targetable. What I mean is your prospects should belong to a community that you can easily locate. This is important because when your business is launched, you need to know where to look for your customers.
This may seem common sense, but in reality, many netpreneurs believe that their product targets everybody. As a result, they advertise everywhere and have no idea why the traffic doesn’t convert.
2) Is there a problem in the market you’re targeting and does your product address to that problem?
In most cases, a business idea is generated when the founder faces a problem that he fails to find a good solution in the market. If this describes the cause of your business idea, then congratulations, as you’ve found THAT problem.
However, if you have no idea what problem your business is solving, you really have to think of one and sell that idea as a problem. Otherwise, you are going to have a hard time convincing people to buy your product.
3) Is your product unique in the market?
To me, this is the most important point before I take action on any business idea.
If you have studied marketing, you may recall the term USP, which stands for Unique Selling Proposition. A good USP is one that not only provides a solution to the problem in Point 2 but one that is unique.
You don’t have to be Einstein to create a unique product. A product can be unique by simply combining two or more ideas into one, or it can be an idea that exists in some part of the world but not found in your territory or country. Or it can even be a cheaper way of providing the same solution and the low price itself can be the uniqueness.
No one can tell you if one USP is more profitable than another. This is where your vision comes into play.
4) Is there a viral component to your business model?
If you think getting traffic is tough, that’s because there isn’t a viral component to your business model. If all the traffic has to be generated by you personally, it’s just a matter of time before you give up internet marketing.
To truly understand the meaning of viral, look at Facebook. While most people think Facebook is doing the world a favor, by providing a good platform for people to connect, in actual fact, the world is actually doing Facebook a favor, as every Facebook user is a free promoter of Facebook, helping Facebook to expand its user base.
Viral components can include many things, from having an affiliate program to providing viral tools. However, the best form of viral component is a system that can easily convert your users into your affiliates, without them having to intentionally promote your website. This means the more they use your product or service to benefit themselves, the more they promote you!
5) Do you have a traffic retention strategy?
Getting traffic is easy, keeping the traffic is harder, converting the traffic into sales is the hardest. A good traffic retention strategy will help you keep the traffic that comes to your website, so that you not only have more chance to convert the traffic into sales, but also have more people promoting your website, if you’ve done the right thing.
The most common form of traffic retention strategy is getting people to optin by giving away freebies. As I said, this is the most common form but with more and more marketers using such trick, you need to be more innovative than that in order to stand out from the rest.
6) Do you have an automatic sales conversion strategy?
People need to be reminded to buy from you. If you need to do this manually, both you and your prospects will get sick and tired of it. Instead, what you should do is to think of a subtle sales conversion strategy that is always reminding your prospects that there is something better waiting for them.
Imagine a person who needs to get from point A to B everyday. He can either get there on foot or take your taxi. It will be annoying if you were to approach this person everyday. Instead you just have to make sure that he sees you everyday and he knows about your offer. One day, when he sees the value of your service, he will buy.
7) Is the need for your product long-lived?
If you sell something that people will only need to use once, you will have to find a new prospect after every sale. That is tedious.
On the other hand, if your product can service a person for live, like an insurance policy, you are going to have recurring income from every sale you make.
Another way of looking at ‘long-lived’ is are you selling a fad? A fad is something that suddenly bursts into a full buying frenzy and then, just as quickly, fizzle out. If you are selling a fad, you may be making some quick money but such income is not lasting. Soon you will be back to square one and you have to start all over again.
