50 great businesses to start for under $500. Not only great ideas, but also ways to get started.

No you won't make a million but it might be useful info.

http://www.internettradebureau.com/article/50-great-businesses-to-a14.html

...shit up, especially once I saw those were actual jobs listed.

:rofl:

PB

But I like the optimism of the article. What the heck; somebody's got to sweep those chimneys. I had a chimney fire once and I know!

Will Farrel, but very disturbing: Donald Mahanahan's Original Child Clown Outlet

PB

:rofl:

years....Clowning as a career option is gradually becoming economically viable. Those working part-time earn between $40 and $150 per hour. Rodeo clowns can earn up to $225 for a single show. The charges are often dependent on traveling costs. Full-time performers just starting out in the profession are likely to be paid around $30,000 annually, while seasoned clowns can earn as much as $70,000 per year. As per the statistics of 2009, the median annual salary of clowns in the United States is $51,000."



Read more: Clown Job Description, Career as a Clown, Salary, Employment - Definition and Nature of the Work, Education and Training Requirements, Getting the Job http://careers.stateuniversity.com/pages/7736/Clown.html#ixzz1PqxFWwVr


:shrug:

might be surprised how many business offer this service. And there is a steady demand for clowns. Who'd have thunk it?

and uses it needs their chimneys swept every few years.

and uses it needs their chimneys swept every few years.

:)

:+

He would dress up in the 19th century British Chimney sweep attire
He made a lot of money at it, but once he reached 35 decided he wanted a job he could do in his 50's.

awful. I felt so sorry for him but was too young to try and encourage a new career for him.

maybe you can shout "Ha Ha!" to someone who tries to pick up on your wife:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QN7kmOhBMw

Or maybe you will have to wait 'til there's no one around to shed your tears

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zww7FQILQec

If you're a chimney sweep, you can dance around on rooftops

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKSPxsX4MDM

If it isn't a union - factory job that pays $30/hr with all the bells and whistles, it isn't worth discussing.

I recently expanded my business, and I'm looking at my business plan and forecasts. Right now it is just me, however I WANT to hire at least one person. But I can't, and that reason is revenue. I'm slowly creeping up on that front, sustainable and not overwhelming.

I keep hearing about all these tax breaks and such for businesses that will allow them to create jobs. The fact of the matter is, without the revenue, I cannot hire anyone. Even if I had 0 tax liability, or all kinds of perks, I still couldn't do it. It all comes down to revenue.

Now, there are three things I know I have to consider when hiring: Salary, Insurance, Taxes. Salary and Taxes I can figure out easily enough, but Insurance is going to suck. However, if there were Medicare for All, I wouldn't have to work about that, just Salary and Taxes.

Then it comes down to revenue. With my target market paying more for gas, insurance, health care, food, housing, heating/cooling, etc, they have less to spend on my services. In my area, it's mostly working class families that are my target, since that's mostly what is around here.
Now if they had more money to spend - through lower income taxes, lower health care costs through Medicare for All, and lower insurance costs, then they'd be more likely to spend money with me. The more they spend with me, the faster I can hire people.

I'm not talking 6 figure salaries here, but I'm hoping for better-than-average pay for the area. If the government wants to help me create jobs, then make it possible for my target market to have more income to spend on my services, and enact a single-payer health care system. Then I can start hiring people.

"Then it comes down to revenue. With my target market paying more for gas, insurance, health care, food, housing, heating/cooling, etc, they have less to spend on my services. In my area, it's mostly working class families that are my target, since that's mostly what is around here. Now if they had more money to spend - through lower income taxes, lower health care costs through Medicare for All, and lower insurance costs, then they'd be more likely to spend money with me. The more they spend with me, the faster I can hire people."

There's only one way to jump-start an economy -- get money into the hands of poor people. Regularly. No matter how.

Brazil's economy has been improving for the last 8 years because it did exactly that. The right-wing here wails like crazy against the "handouts", but it's precisely those handouts that allowed business to survive and flourish.

The more you squeeze the middle class and the poor, the less viable business becomes.

The key is to be passionate about one's work.

Why, if it weren't for those lousy fucking unions, we'd have hardly any unemployment at all. Why would corporations have to outsource jobs to China if they could get cheap labor with very little government regulation here at home?

is about how far by which you have missed my point.

Nicely done!!


Sheesh...I thought this group was smarter than that. I really needed a sarcasm thingy for my post?

I've frequently come to various DU forums and groups to share experiences, exchange advice, and get referrals for various elements of my business and always found DUers very helpful and encouraging.

My experience is that DUers appreciate entrepreneurs who are micro- and small business people following their passion and trying to do work of value to the community. I think there is some dubious regard of the quick-buck school of entrepreneurship, but that's true most places except Wall Street and other bastions of Greed Uber Alles, in my experience.

Sorry if you haven't had good vibes for your entrepreneurial venture here on DU. Try some of the groups!

helpfully,
Bright

But that can't be! That would mean the Right Wing may not be the Cosmic Truth, and thinking that is un-American!

:silly:

Thar's A BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GIANT CORP. AMERICA AND A POOR FUCK TRYING TO MAKE A Living. I know because am one of the poor fucks trying to make a living

SAS
Edward Jones
Wegmans
Google
Nugget Market
DreamWorks Animation
NetApp
Boston Consulting Group
Qualcomm
Camden Property Trust

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2010/

"When most of us here phrases like . . . "

OK. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt and keep reading but it's hard when I hit something like that right off the bat. :shrug:

100% moronic.

I usually keep them in check better. ;-)

that it tends to degrade the message. I know it probably shouldn't feel that way, but it does.

That and the fact that I don't believe for a second that you can start a business in most of those for $500.

If you have tools already, the cost for doing something line small engine repair are next to nothing. These are ideas. No one has to click on anything.

There's an excellent chance you're already in that business.

Tutoring requires credentials, if you already have the credential great, if not forget it.

but never thought those skills were marketable. They were skills he picked up on his own. The tools he had were for projects around the house. I'm sure others may have skills they don't realize are marketable.

I don't know how to fix engines but do know that it doesn't take hundreds of dollars worth of tools to fix small engines.

You have to be both fast and good to make any money, I'm a damn good electronic and electromechanical troubleshooter but it can be a very time consuming job and unless the widget you're working on is worth a lot more than a small engine you can't afford to put much time in each unit as a business.

The equipment I used to work on started at about thirty grand and went up to the mid hundred thousands and my clients still resisted calling me unless all else failed.

a list of businesses someone without a lot of cash could start up. Geez Louise.

but I don't sew any more--bad hands. I have had 5 hand surgeries (2 on the left hand and 3 on the right hand) and I also have some arthritis in my hands, so I seldom pick up a needle and thread any more except occasionally to mend or hem something for myself.

I will say, though, that you can make good money doing alterations. Hemming a straight or A-line skirt is simple and takes no time at all, but young women who are willing to pay someone else to do something that simple are willing to pay pretty well for it!

You need to be good, though, to do other alterations. I used to get the muscular guys who wanted their shirts altered to fit tightly enough to show off their bodies. Altering a shirt just so for a man is tricky. The fact that I could do it got me a lot of word-of-mouth business from guys who were always disappointed in the results when other seamstresses did it for them.

Painting for instance, you have to bid the job and if you don't have a lot of experience it's easy to lose a bundle by underbidding a job and the temptation to underbid is very strong if you're really needing the work.

As we say in the construction contracting game, you can go broke at home watching TV, you don't have to go out and work your ass off in the hot sun or freezing cold to do it.

Also known as "Diminishing Returns of Self-Employment."

As in, you get to bill for half of the hours you actually work, and you get to keep half of the money you actually collect.

wryly,
Bright

job as a full-time adjunct lecturer in English at a state university). I take on only as much work as I feel I can handle without shortchanging my other work. I do most of my side jobs in the summer, though I do tutor some kids all year.

I also help students write college applications and applications for scholarships. Some of my tutoring clients also use me to help them prepare for the SAT and ACT tests.

As a writer for hire, I also format and shape up resumes and do the bibliographies for people who feel overwhelmed at the idea of figuring out how to format their works cited pages.

Writer/editor for hire and tutor are not on that job list, but they have no start-up costs, so if you have those skills, you can use them to increase your income--not by huge amounts, but by enough to make a difference.

WARNING: If you earn self-employment income, you need to tuck away about 40% of everything you earn that way to pay your taxes, because you will be on the hook for both the employee's and the employer's share of the social security tax. IOW, if you bring in $5000 in side income, you will pay about $2000 in taxes on it! Also, make sure you carefully document every deductible expense, because those deductions canwill make a huge difference at tax time. I save the receipt if I even buy a 99-cent colored pen to use while tutoring!

Being in business for yourself is much more difficult in some ways than working for someone else, keeping track of expenses is just one facet of that.

Except that this was published back in 1990...

ADVERTISING COPYWRITER. If you are clever with words and have a good sense of salesmanship, there are many small businesses in your community which can use your services. You can write newspaper ads, brochures, radio ads, catalogs, and more. For more ideas, look for a copy of the 1990 Writer's Market, Writers Digest Books, F&W Publications, 1507 Dana Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45207.

This is the blurb for writing advertising copywriter....

The significance that some or all of it may be from 1990 escapes me. :shrug:

for starters.

There's a lot of these businesses that you aren't going to touch for $500 investment any more..

tools and know how to repair small engines, what start up costs would there be other than printing some flyers?

I get the impression that you're talking about things you've never done, I'm an advanced shade tree mechanic, been working on my own bicycles/motorcycles/cars/trucks for going on fifty years and I don't have the tools or really the skills to set up in business doing that.

repairs like lawn mowers. I have never fixed small engines but saw my Dad fix them.

Recently I've read articles about people opting nowadays to repair items that previously they would have simply replaced. It seems that if someone knows how to repair stuff these days that skill is marketable.

I've got about five grand and close to a year's work in my latest business endeavor and I'm just getting to the point I can make a few dollars with it producing replacement parts for commercial envelope stuffing machines for bulk mailing.

If I could have done something for $500 and started making money immediately I would have jumped on it in a heartbeat, the competition is savage out there and the best way to get around it is find a niche that's small and specialized.

:hi:

room. The caption read, "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog."

I have often been surprised to discover that I had been mistaken for years about one DU poster or another.

the $500 figure seems to have come out of someone's ass anyway, whether it's 1990 or 2011.

close to $500 dollars even in 2011. I can only assume you didn't read the list.

I grew up in small business, my parents both owned their own business (two different ones) and I've been self employed for the great majority of my working career.

It's damn hard at the best of times and this is far from the best of times.

Not to mention that the skills and attitudes needed for starting a business and those needed to run an ongoing business are considerably different.

so I know it's difficultbut not impossible. Many times success is a matter of luck, personality and word of mouth. This list gives people who have it in them to strike out on their own but don't have a lot of resources some ideas. Perhaps the businesses, like tblue37's tutoring, will simply be additional income.

And every single one I know anything about has major pitfalls that are extremely difficult for a new person to avoid and could end up costing you far more than you could ever hope to make.

If you're working on other people's stuff in any way you'd better have insurance for one thing, workman's comp for painters for instance is very expensive because it's a dangerous job.

You might check out the post recently put up about home hairdressing, if you don't have a license it's going to set you back thousands and a lot of time to get one. That also is another business where you'd better have insurance because a lot of the chemicals used can be quite dangerous if not used properly.

have a license. As I stated in another I once knew a hairdresser who refused to work in a salon because she didn't want to work with chemicals and also felt salon owners exploited her. She made a decent living just cutting and styling hair at the home of her clients.

I'm talking about business liability insurance..

They're going to charge you as if you were using the chemicals even if you say you're not..

and her business was all word of mouth.

Now I understand..

If you aren't licensed as a cosmetologist, your first step is to give a beauty school $5000 of your money and 1600 hours of your time because you can't even touch a customer in the US without a license. And then you'd have to fight with the state board of cosmetic arts.

I would think hard (if I had a license, which I don't) about getting on with a nursing home.

license. Don't pooh pooh retirement homes, there are alot of women with limited mobility who like having their hair coiffed. I once a knew hairstylist who only cut hair (didn't like to work with chemicals) and and refused to work for salons which she felt ripped her off. She did quite well going to her clients homes.

This was an article on "how to start a business for $500." If you've got a license already, you already know about the joys of home haircutting; if you have no license it costs about the price of a good used car to get one.

as a stylist. She also will occasionally pick up a client or two in a hospital-usually in maternity.

The women in retirement homes still want to look nice. Some cannot go out due to transportation while others appreciate the convenience of having someone on grounds style their hair. As for the women in the maternity ward she usually sells a package in advance. Included in the package is a facial, a touch-up on nails, a hair styling, and make up. Sometimes a pedicure is also included.

She's licensed and she knows how to market herself outside of the salon. She makes a decent living-better than she ever did while working for someone else.

"borrow" all the music you'll need.

Then there's the fact that a lot of places you play will require that you have liability and property damage insurance.

That's a minimum of $250 a year for coverage.

A more realistic figure to start a competitive DJ business is around 5 to 7 grand.

I have been to many bait shops in my day but my favorite was Edna Ruth's Bait Shop. It was near Norman, Oklahoma. Edna Ruth was older than dirt back in the 70s so I suppose she and her night crawlers are long gone.

However, her old glider lives on. In 1975 or '76 I was at her shop and noticed an old metal three seat glider out under a far tree. It was leaning heavily to one side. I asked her if she was interested in selling it. She responded "It will take a pretty penny to separate me from that glider." She then pointed out it was leaning heavily to one side and could be broken and that her husband had always taken care of it but he was no longer able to and she didn't have much opportunity to glide anymore.

I then asked her how much she would take for it. She responded $20. My first thought, she isn't makin' much on worms, minnows and crickets if she thinks $20 is a pretty penny. Anyway - we agreed to the amount and I borrowed a pickup the next day to haul it off.

It was not broken - it need one bolt to fix. I later had it restored and it is beautiful. Its on my front porch. Whenever anyone comments on it I say - "That's Edna Ruth's glider and she just let me borrow it". Then they usually ask for the whole story.

Maybe it will come full circle - I might, in my dotage, move back to Oklahoma and open a bait shop and put Edna Ruth's glider under a far tree.

Second pic down is what it looked like when I got it - http://www.vintageglider.com/id8.html

My goodnes - I just looked at the prices on those gliders. Wow

'It's never too late to be what you might have been."
George Elliot

Maybe it was #51.

It's well done and it's great that they provide reference material.

I've been putting together tools & materials to open a framing shop for some time.

I'd add, boat dock builder, lawn care/ landscaping, and, truck gardener/farmer and I do well sometimes as an amature/semi-pro rock n' roll guitar player and singer but that could be covered partially under the "clown" gig.

Reasonable enough "hobby" jobs for self-starters, but you really have to know the area you will be providing that work in. You might be waiting weeks between jobs until word of mouth gets around enough to get a somewhat steady income. And even then, you might only be looking at one or two "jobs" a week.
If you live in a lower income location, being a stained glass artist may not be the best start-u< job. Also, many of those jobs (consulting, light hauling, house cleaning,small engines)have a lot of competition. I tried a resume/word processing and graphic arts consulting service start up in 1997/98, and even then, advertising, cards, and fliers alone ate up far more than $500. [br />I think I poured around $2500 into the business, not counting the computer and printer, mind you - and got three whole jobs that made me $175 that year. Luckily, I had a full-time job between short periods of unemployment (which is why I tried starting the business in the first place) so I didn't have to depend on this for full-time.

In hindsight, if I had been smart, I would have kept the business license another year and hooked-up with the mailbox/office services franchise that opened up a couple blocks down the way and perhaps gotten some decent work that way.

Just be aware, jobs like these take time and ingenuity to start making money.

Haele

can definately start this business for less than $500. I did.

Here is what you do:

Check craigslist for inteesting vehicles. What I mean by interesting is something out of the ordinary. You can make moneyy on ordinary cars but the bigger money is in oddball cars. Look forr ones with bad engines. Once people find how much "oddball" cars are to fix they give up. Target those with asking prices under $700 ish. Find some you like, and check on ebay for parts sales for those cars. If things are selling regularly, make a list of what they are selling for and get a ballpark total for the parts. Also, check the vehicle weight. This is the key to this business. What you will offer is what the car will bring at the recyclers for metal value. Cars are going now for between $10.50 -$13.00 per 100 lbs. A typical car will weigh about 3000 lbs or so. So, you are going to be offering at max, $350. Bring cash! You will be suprised what people will take for their broken cars when the cash is in their face.

Got a car? Good! Now go to Uhaul and rent a trailer - about $65 for a day. Get there early! Pick up the trailer and car ASAP in the AM. Get to you house/shop/friends house/scrap yard parking lot. The last sugestion is what I did on my first car. Now, take off whatever sells well on ebay and put it to the side. Keep going with your list until you run out of time/get everything off that sells well. Then, run the carcas across the scales and get a check for the metal weight - should be around $225-350 depending on the car and what you took off. (BTW, there are othe things you can/should take off for metal value but this is just a quick money deal) Then take the trailer back by closing time to not get an extra charge.

So, you bought the car for say $350, you got, say $300 back from the metal sale, you spent $65 for the trailer, and you have another $35 in gas, lunch etc. into this deal. Net so far (-$100). Now, to make your money, put the stuff you spent 5-6 hours taking off on ebay. Hopefully, you will have around $700 in parts to sell (that is my minimum - I won't do a car that will make me less than $500) which, after fees, will net you about $600. This will take about a week of calendar time but about another 8-10 actual hours.

So, for 2 days work, you made $500. Now, what I did was get my own trailer after my 4th car with the profits. Makes things a lot easier and not so rushed. Also, once a deal is done I can losd up the car onto the trailer and drive away saving anothe trip to the sellers house.

I basically only do one make of cars now and most of my sales are on specialty websites, not ebay, but this is how it all started. Profits from the first week, easy to scale down (I take a lot of vacation) and no employees.

It does require having a vehicle that can tow a trailer with another vehicle on it though.

Thanks for posting.

:hi:

screwdrivers, socket sets). I already had a truck (that I bought on craigslist for $700, needed a new hard brake line, $15 at autozone and an hour of my time - 45 minutues of which were bleeding the brakes myself) I know this would put it past the $500 mark to get started but given that the article is 20+ years old we can say inflation should make it $1000, right?

If you were starting from absolute zero tools/truck, you would probably need $1500 to get what you need (truck/basic tools) and your first car. After 3 cars (as little as 2 weeks) you should have your investment back and be making decent money.

People sometimes ask me if this is hard/dirty work. Most of my time is spent on the computer - searching cars, selling parts, etc. Only about 1/3 of the time is actually outside touching cars.

I now only do about 10 cars a year. I make about 1500-2000 per car. But I strip the whole car down now, sell engines/glass/bodyparts takes about 30 hours just in the prep and I know the cars and what sells as I specialize in one make. When I first started I basically sold interior trim and easy to get to stuff.

Mainly I do it for fun. I am weired like that!

there are still many people and small business owners with no computer savvy that may need help with newer apps.

I know several people on DU are making a bundle off that one!

.

In spite of all the blowhard University of Chicago "Supply side economists" that follow Milton Friedman.

You can have all the supply in the world, but if nobody wants to buy, you're SOL.

:banghead:

I was selling necklaces and bracelets -- beadstringing. i was not doing any fabricating, which takes torches and assorted tools. I had Miva Merchant software, my own website and such. I shut it down because I didn't have enough money to keep it going.

How much did I sell? In one year I sold ONE pair of hoop earrings for $12.95. :cry:

:banghead:

And don't mind paying guests.