Prudent and Practical

This week’s installment of Creative Ways to Make Money talks about some services that you can offer with few tools and little money.

Start a Service

• Start a Cleaning Service. This requires very few supplies to get started.
• Start a Consulting Service. What do you know how to do better than most people?  Can you teach it or do it for others? For example, if you studied engineering in college, you could be an Engineering Consultant. Some other consultants are for Financial Planning, Business Planning, Computing, Research, Training, and Marketing, and more. Please inquire your state and local laws to see if you need to be registered.
• Start a Day Care. You’ll need to have a license, liability insurance, possibly extra training, and be certified in CPR and First Aid.  Similar services to offer would be Babysitting and Nanny.
  
• Become a House-Sitter. You need to be trustworthy and reliable, have references, and transportation.
• Become a Pet-Sitter. You must be an animal lover. This could be an add-on service to house-sitting.
• Become a Professional Organizer. Pretty self-explanatory, you can visit the National Association of Professional Organizers for more information.
• Become a Personal Shopper or Personal Errand runner. You could shop for Christmas gifts for a busy executive or make a grocery run for an elderly person.
• Become a Personal Scrapbooker.  Help those who don’t have time to do it themselves.
  
• Become a Desktop Publisher or Graphic Designer. Create cards, brochures, and fliers for businesses.
• Become a Handy Man or Handy Madam. Depending on your skill level, you could hang pictures for busy people or install new sink fixtures, for example. Perfect add-on to Cleaning Service or Professional Organizer.
• Become a Tutor. Contact local private and public schools and universities to offer your services. Kids as well as adults can use tutoring these days.
• Start a Secretarial Service (Typist, Transcriptionist, and Proofreader). Seek out small businesses that may have a need for very temporary help.
• Become a Planner. Cater to brides with wedding planning services or cater to businesses that need an event planner.
• Become a Landscaper or Landscape Designer. You could offer consulting services for do-it-yourselfers or do the mowing, planting, and trimming for them too.
• Become a Home Stager.  This is similar to home decorating.  Home Stagers help people getting ready to sell their homes – you go in and straighten things up and move furniture around to give it a more design-y feel. An add-on to this service would be to assist with packing and moving when the customer sells their home.
  
• Start a Shoe Shining Service. I saw this one on tv recently – the guy is making pretty decent money doing this at airports, malls, and street corners.
• Become a Computer Nerd. Offer troubleshooting and computer repair services. If you have the know-how, you can offer to build customized computers, but think about how you’ll warranty it.
• Paint street numbers on curbs.  Just make sure that it’s ok with your city first.
• Become a Cooking Instructor or Personal Chef.
• Start a Framing Service.  If you have a mat cutter, you an offer services.
• Start a Genealogical Service.  A lot of people want to know their ancestry and are willing to pay for this time consuming task.  If you know some tricks of the trade, you can offer to search genealogical centers and websites to help track down a person’s ancestry.
  

To be successful with these ideas you should start with your friends and family and then network network network!  You can get some cheap business cards at VistaPrint or you can design and print your own on your computer.

Creative Ways to Make Money Part 1: Selling
Creative Ways to Make Money Part 2: Start a Service
Creative Ways to Make Money Part 3: Computer Work
Creative Ways to Make Money Part 4: Miscellaneous Jobs

After speaking with my sister today, I realized that there is a need for some valid job ideas.  She’s made some mistakes and is in need of money to keep a roof over her head.  She’s researching direct sales, specifically Mary Kay.  She’s been a consultant in the past but it didn’t work out for her back then.  The next four articles are dedicated to my younger sister, in hopes that she will look at all options and her extraordinary talents to find some extra income.

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