Real Home Business Examples (from Jim Daniels) With 150,000 subscribers, I get a lot of email. And I welcome it. It keeps me "in the loop" and what I'm hearing a lot lately, is how the economy is affecting people's lives.
Personal accounts of lost jobs and slower businesses have been increasing over the past weeks and months. It's no wonder -- with the pound and dollar sinking in value, the price of everything is going up.
On the flip side, I'm also hearing from lots of folks who've managed to open a new income stream. Today I'd like to share a few of their examples. While these businesses may not make millions, they do generate increasing income, AND they were started with little or no money. Maybe they'll spark an idea or two in you.
I have five examples I'd like to show you today. The first three are localized businesses that anyone can emulate in their own area. The final two are web based examples of people turning their interests into income online.
Example #1: Home Checking Service
Jen is a hard working 30-something who puts in 40-50 hours a week at her regular deli job. Yet with an £160 a month rent payment, a car payment and well, you know... all the rest of the bills that continually flow into her mailbox, making ends meet can be difficult.
But a regular "kind deed" she's been doing sparked an idea for a business. Jen lives in an area where lots of residents migrate south for the winter. Most of them leave their homes unattended. Every week or two she had been checking on the home of a local doctor and he'd pay her when he came back in the Spring.
Jen figured, why not offer this service to other local residents? So she put up a simple one-page website explaining her service, RhodeIslandHouseWatch.com.
She included a letter from her first customer and carefully listed all the local areas she served. This helps her get search engine traffic when people search for a service like hers plus the town they live in.
Next she made up a flyer and posted it on local community bulletin boards, in supermarkets and local shops. She called a few estate Agents offices that deal with seasonal rentals and offered her services to their clients at a discount rate.
Before long she may just be earning more from this "part-time" venture than her regular job!
Lesson: Look for opportunities like this in your local area. Home watch services and even housesitting is a growing business anyone can profit from.
Example #2: From Yard Sales to Craigslist
Warren loves going to car boot sales and flea markets. During the summer he resells the goods he finds by holding his own weekend garage sales. But during the winter, his basement gets rather full.
This winter he needed some extra cash to pay for an extra canister of heating oil. If you use oil to heat your home in the winter, you understand just how much extra cash Warren needed.
So he took his digital camera into his basement and started taking pictures of everything he thought he could sell for more than $20. In the span of two hours, he had more than 40 items ranging in potential resale value from $20 to about $100.
He had heard about ebay for selling items but didn't want to deal with shipping and paying commissions. So he figured he'd try Craigslist instead.
Craigslist.org is a classified site that serves more than 500 cities in 50 countries. It gets millions of visitors a week, is 100% free to use and it deals only locally. That means lots of eyeballs to see your offers, but no commissions to pay, and no shipping hassles!
Warren sat down and started posting all his items for sale. Minutes later, the phone rang -- even before he got to his 4th item. Warren was dumbfounded. Why hadn't he tried this before today! Yes, minutes after posting an ad he had sold his first item. (I can vouch for this, as I posted an
ad on craigslist last year for a french door I had left over after a remodeling job - I sold it literally 4 minutes after posting it. In fact, I sold a £7,000 Jeep on Craigslist too!)
In the span of two weeks Warren sold 28 of the 40 items! His wife was much happier. She could now make it to the washer and dryer without going through a maze of Cabbage Patch Kids, artificial trees and strange looking car parts.
Warren was happy because he heated his home for the rest of the winter and still had enough money left over to "restock" the basement this Spring! As a matter of fact, he went out and bought himself a new digital camera and a laptop to make his new "business" run faster. After all, one man's junk is another man's er... business!
Lesson: When things get tight, sell off some of the extra stuff you have laying around. Most people have literally hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of items in their house, that they never use! With Craigslist you can easily turn it into cash, and maybe even make a business out of it.
Example #3: Senior Citizen Assistant
Frances worked locally for a local Authority. She worked full-time to make ends meet. One day her boss calls with bad news. They're being forced to eliminate her position. Her job will be history in a few weeks.
What next? Start looking for another job in this tough economy? She knew she'd be lucky to find something that paid as much as her old job.
One of her favorite things to do is help her elderly neighbors. As a senior citizen herself, she knows how lucky she is to be independent and still able to drive. The people she helps are happy to pay her a small fee for all her trips to pick up medicine, take them to doctors appointments and go shopping for them.
In her local area about half the residents are seniors -- it dawns on her that this could generate a full-time income if she wants! So rather than look for another job, Fran decides to try something different.
She puts a simple website up to attract more local residents to her services. Naturally, she chooses a keyword-rich domain name, http://www.SarasotaPersonalSeniorAssistant.com. This helps her get search engine traffic from people looking for help in her area.
Next she grabs some free business cards at VistaPrint.com and includes her website address on the cards. She gives some cards to her clients, leaves them in senior centers and churches -- and bingo! Fran is off and running, literally. The extra exercise helps her stay young and she's finally her own boss.
Lesson: Some of the things you already do can be turned into a business. And businesses like personal shoppers are a growing trend. That's because people are happy to pay a small fee to save themselves from life's everyday hassles.
Side note: You may have noticed that Jen and Fran above have very similar sites. That's because their sites were built using a template I include with my ez web business builder software.
(If you want a copy of that software, use coupon code "overstock" at checkout. You'll get the CD shipped to you, plus a deep discount. This offer is good until the extra CD's are gone from my shelf.)
Now for some more examples.
(Both of the people in these last two examples did not want to do a local business. They preferred to stay home and make money. They also didn't want to have to build a website. So they used the new Video Affiliate Marketing platform Scott Britner and I put together.)
Example #4: Pizza Making
The first video based example is from a pizza aficionado...
No, you can't eat a pizza at this website. But you can do the next best thing. You can discover the secrets to making a great Mexican style pizza at this pizza video site. (As a pizza lover I watched this video closely and even went out to buy the ingredients.)
In the process of teaching people the art of pizza-making, the site owner earns income from a great pizza making product sold at clickbank. The site owner also earns money many other ways. I'll bet you can think of something you love and turn it into an income stream too!
Example #5: GPS Reviews
Here's a great example of technology selling technology. I don't know about you, but GPS navigation devices can seem a bit intimidating at first glance. But they are definitely worth taking a few minutes to clear that hurdle.
I have GPS navigation in my car and when I bought it I had no idea I'd use it as much as I do. If you have ever hassled with finding a location, getting lost, using those long drawn out mapquest directions or simply reading or folding maps, you need a GPS device.
But deciding which one to get can be a nightmare. That's why this smart marketer decided to help GPS shoppers by showing them different GPS devices in action. Review videos that compare competing products, is perhaps the best way to explain the best (and worst) features of the most
popular devices on the market. So which device do you think looks easiest...
Garmin 880
Magellan
Maestro
Navigon 2100
TomTom 720
Notice that this smart marketer too, earns commissions from GPS sales, adsense commissions, amazon.com commissions and more.
Lesson: As both video based examples above show, helping people learn something new, or helping them make informed decisions, can be great ways to make money on the Internet.
In closing...
As I explained at the outset, these business may not make millions but they are easy and very inexpensive to start. After all, lots of people are not trying to get rich, they're happy to just make some extra money to take the pressure off.
Get Jim Daniels'book FREE - 'Work At Home Plan' just click this link -
http://www.webbusinesswizard.com/app/?af=675902
When you get on the site you can get this special report FREE by clicking on the secret 'order form bypass link'. (*secret insider info. - there's a 'key' involved.) Good luck Phil Walker.
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