Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer in the Southern. It got me thinking just how many little opportunities the seasons can bring for making a little extra cash. The harsh northern winter this year has seen some enterprising individuals offering snow and ice clearing in their local neighbourhoods and we’ve heard of some also offering to de-ice cars and even warm them up ready for the morning commute!
What is such a service worth? Charge what you think you can! Personally having the driveway ready to drive out of and the car de-iced ready to roll would be worth a few dollars to me! The tools required to provide the service are minimal, some warm water and a can of de-icer for the car and a shovel for any snow clearing.
Now its outdoor work so obviously not true work at home as we normally talk about here but as most of this stuff is within a few doors of your own place we’re making the exception and mentioning it here.
In the southern hemisphere its mid summer now and schools are closed so people are on vacation which means their homes and pets are left behind. Again just in your own block you can offer houseminding services, clearing mail boxes, putting out the rubbish, maybe playing the stereo and putting a light on at night or parking your own car in the drive. It all makes the place look lived in and less attractive to thieves as well as keeping the fish fed!
You can extend the service to minding dogs at your own place if its suitable. There are many dog lovers who would much rather have their pet stay with a family than go to a boarding kennel and they’ll pay the equivalent of kennelling rates for it. They’ll even provide any special diet foods, shampoos etc where needed so all you have to do is treat the dog as your own for a while, giving it the attention and exercise it is used to. If you have kids they can get really into this!
When looking for small business ideas to make money at home with, you’ll find that there are many sites which are aimed solely at removing money from your wallet and another whole bunch which do not see the difference between work at home and work from home!
There is of course a huge difference and if you’re looking for something that you really can do part-time, then its likely you’ll be looking for a work at home idea.
Let’s bear in mind all those self-employed electricians, carpenters, plumbers and gardeners are all working from home. They do not have an office in town with a staff to answer phones and take care of accounts etc. They probably have an office (or something that substitutes for one) at home but the majority of their work is undertaken elsewhere. They are not working at home.
Just saw this excellent and funny little video explaining the principles of social media marketing.
Its aimed at larger enterprises than most work at home businesses but the principles are the same no matter what your size. If you have a business in just about anything you can learn from this how to spread the word in a positive light.
Most small businesses including home based ones end up with a website, whether to sell products or to catalogue services or just talk about the business. Whether you build it yourself or have it professionally built, your next task is to get people actually using it.
As any web designer who handles small business clients can tell you, there are a huge number of people out there who still believe in the maxim “build it and they will come”. This unfortunately is simply not the case.
Unless your site is one of a small few that deal in the subject matter you are fighting for attention with all the other sites out there that want to get listed for the same search terms entered into a search engine like Google. Even if you are one of a few, you still need to get the search engines to realise you exist.
That is where we start our search engine optimisation journey. So let’s look at what we can do to get listed in Google. Read More…
I keep coming across some cool little businesses run right from home that almost anyone can do.
I recently came across a couple who have a nice little business dealing in sports related collectibles including football trading cards as well as little figurines and souvenir signed posters etc.
They do everything in their own time using a website to market their goods and getting traffic from links, adwords and some ebay marketing.
While its not their main income they do very nicely from it, its enough to pay for the treats and to set up their retirement fund, though I reckon they’ll be doing this stuff well past retirement from work.
Good luck to them, always nice to hear of folk setting themselves up with a little security doing something they love!
When looking for small business ideas to make money at home with, you’ll find that there are many sites which are aimed solely at removing money from your wallet and another whole bunch which do not see the difference between work at home and work from home!
