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1. Car washing
(door to door, or apartment house to apartment house, you can carry your own
hose and supplies, use the car owner's water faucet, and earn as much money in a
day as you can stand to scrub.)
2. Service jobs around the house, such as mowing, raking, cleaning out
garages, sweeping gutters, washing windows etc.
3. Sit with the elderly or a handicapped person. Offer to read
stories, help write letters for them, shop for them. (There are an
increasing number of people who need a sitter for a loved one, but their ability
to pay for this service is dwindling. You can provide a very kind and
valuable service to a family by offering to work for less than the going rate of
$8 per hour. If you can sit and do some work of your own while you take
care of your client, it can be worth it to you to charge only $4 or so an hour.)
4. Run a shopping service in your neighborhood, or for large offices in
the city. Leave flyers or a card with your phone number at houses and
businesses. Buy gifts for their loved ones, or pick up needed groceries to
drop off to them before they get off work, saving them much time to spend with
their families at home.
5. Special cleaning jobs. Advertise by word of mouth, and by flyer,
ads if you can afford it. Spring cleaning, fire damage, animal clean up,
blood stains (may require special permit to hire out for this), or for motor
homes, semi trucks and even apartments in between renters.
6. Gardening, landscaping, indoor herb gardens, creating decorative ponds
(arranging stones and plants in beds with a fountain or pool), etc. You
can also grow and rent out office greenery, with a monthly maintenance contract
to keep the plants watered, pruned and pretty. Or just do the maintenance
on their own plants.
7. Bake sale. You can make unusual goodies or traditional. Set
up by stores or hand out flyers that you'll make special cakes on demand.
You can turn a nice profit on this enterprise, and if you like to cook, can keep
it going. You can even provide snacks and lunches to office workers.
If you can set it up, sell hot dogs on the street for busy workers at lunch.
This will require a permit, but the bake sale and individual sales won't in most
places. (Have you ever baked cupcakes with a Hershey's kiss inside?)
8. Party planner. Design themes for birthday parties, office
parties, graduation and wedding parties. Be a clown for hire, deliver
singing telegrams, or if you're good with words - poems, special prayers etc.
If you don't have this service in your area to get a job with, start your own.
9. Tutoring. Whatever you know well, and enjoy doing, can be taught
to someone else for a price. Crafts, cooking, art, general education, etc.
10.
Computer skills. If you're good with a computer, advertise at stores that
sell them, offices, and in your penny saver free ads, that you'll set up new
computers and teach people how to use them.
11. You can also offer to take people's photographs and scan them onto
discs or make internet files of their family albums that they can share with
email friends. To get a roll of pictures onto a disc at developing stores,
you will pay about $8 a roll. Charge somewhere near that price.
12. Storyteller. Memorize a few stories or write your own, hire out
to day care centers and organizations, even nursing homes - and tell the story
with as much body language as you can. Act the stories out, or gesture in
an interesting way as you speak clearly and loudly enough to be heard.
Dress attractively and appropriately.
13. Write stories or articles for your local newspaper. You could
expect to earn about 10 cents per word on an article. If you can make
crafts or have some special angle, offer to do a regular column on that subject.
If you like to write, practice your skills and submit your work to magazines,
greeting card companies and publishers. Book publishers pay about $5,000
to $10,000 advance for a book, even for those little kindergarten picture books.
You can earn $10 to $50 each for jokes, fillers and interesting anecdotes in
hundreds of magazines. For more information, check the Writers Market 2001
book at your local library.
14. If you live in the south or near a company that shells and buys nuts
(pecans etc.) you can contact them to shell out the nutmeats from cracked nuts.
You get so many cents per pound, take 100 pd. sacks home and separate them,
return just the nutmeats and collect your money.
15. Painting street numbers on curbs in cities. I know a man in Ohio
who does this for a living, on a donation only basis. He made over one
million dollars one year, collecting an average of $3 per house. Of course
he had a crew. One man going ahead to a neighborhood leaving flyers
telling homeowners when they'd be in the neighborhood. When they arrive,
they ask from house to house who would like this service done, and ask for a
small donation.
To do this, be very careful and uniform in your work. Ask the DOT what
type of paint would work best, and make your stencils. Also check for
permits required and be very careful of over spray if you use spray paint.
You might think about insurance against having an incident where you damage
someone's property. (We know a man who does varnishing of wood
floors. His son went outside to clean the varnish from their tools and the
wind blew the paint mess onto the home owners brand new white Cadillac.
You can be sure they were glad they had insurance!)
16. Sell advertising to local businesses. Pick a theme (upcoming
event) and create a flyer to advertise special offers, discounts and coupons at
several businesses. The businesses who agree to advertise in your flyer
pay you $30 for a one inch ad. You need at least 10 businesses to
participate to make a good profit. It will cost you about $150 to
print up 2000 flyers at a print shop. (one color ink) If you
collect $30 from 10 businesses you've got $300, minus the $150 you spend to
print. Then hand out the flyers at all the participating stores (have them
set the flyers out on a counter for the public to pick up), and pocket the $150
profit.
17. Candy boxes and donation boxes set out on counters where a store will
allow you to leave one. Be careful with this idea, so that it's completely
honest and upright. You may need permission from local authorities to do
this.
If you get
permission to set out some collection containers, you can try Pringles potato
chip cans or oatmeal boxes. Use a computer and have a professional looking
label made for your boxes that tells what you are asking or offering. If
you want to make your own non-profit organization or become associated with an
existing church or organization you can collect money for needy families.
If you want to make money just for yourself, you can either ask for a donation
because of a hardship (if you are disabled, etc.) or sell lollipops for a
donation of at least a quarter.
You can figure out your own system to deliver candy and take in money, or you
can make a slit in the lid of the container, and punch small holes in the sides
all around, poking one lollipop through each hole and securing with a short
piece of clear tape.
For more information, more
ideas and help getting started, check out my ebooks
and feel free to email me HERE
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