Service Oriented Businesses

This blog post will be part of a series of posts which describe various common business models.

Service Businesses: This is a huge category so I'm going to generalize a lot. Basically, you provide a service and someone pays you for it. One year when I was in college I paid my December rent at the beginning of the month and had only $22 left in the bank. That meant I had no means of buying Christmas presents for anyone, and no means of even driving home for Christmas because my car was out of gas. $22 meant I would barely have enough to eat for the month. But one thing I did have was a lot of snow. I found a snow shovel for 9.99, and walked all over town looking for driveways that were still snowed in. On that very day I made over $100.00. That was good money, but it still left me pretty cheap on Christmas gifts, so I prayed for more snow. Yeah, I actually did pray about it.
I got two more storms in the next two weeks, skipped a few classes, and made a lot more. My first day of shoveling I had to walk all over the place looking for driveways that were not shoveled. I was friendly with my customers and asked if I could come back next time it snowed. I did a thorough shoveling job, and they told me to come back. This saved me several hours of hunting for clients the second time it snowed. Thats how service businesses work. You get paid for providing a service. Do a good job and be a friendly person, and you will get easy repeat business. I still have that shovel. A ten dollar investment earned me several hundred.

I knew a 19 year old who started a lawn-mowing business when he was 14. By the time he was 16 he had bought three brand new riding mowers and had a list of over 100 clients. He hired out his friends and made over $40,000 for himself each summer from when he was 17 through 19. Last I heard he was out of high school and was planning to into a year-round business of mowing, leaf raking, snow shoveling, and whatever else he can get into. If you work hard you can get a long list of clients quickly. You don't need a sophisticated plan and a business degree.

The service model is a pretty inexpensive way to start a business. All you need is your own skills and maybe a few basic tools. Its a good way to make some money that you can use to either reinvest in your business, or use to start a different one that requires more up front capital.

More Ways to Make Money from Swine Flu

Ok everybody. The last Swine Flu post seems to have gone over pretty well, so here is a special bonus idea for our loyal reader.

Business Idea: "Non-Swine Flu Pork"
How the Business Works
1. Get on NPR.
2. Break a story in which you make unsubstantiated claims that all pork contains Swine Flu. Speak in a soft, clear, and disinterested tone about how the meat industry has kept this a secret. Refer to the meat industry as "Big Pork."
3. Suddenly pork and ham will become extremely inexpensive
4. Buy as much of it as you can afford
5. Slap a label on it that says "Now with 0% Swine Flu!"
6. Sell it to a hippie food store for three times what you bought it for.

the end

How to Make $112.50 with a Tow Truck

Business Name: Predatory Towing Co.

How the Business Works:
1. Get a tow truck. You can do this in one of two ways:
      A. Buy one using conventional, legal means
      B. Call up a towing company and have them tow a tow truck away from a different towing company and drop it off at your house
2. Good. Now you have a tow truck
3. Drive around looking for a nice car
4. Follow it until it parks
5. Wait for the owner to get out and walk away
6. If the owner sees you idling by his driveway and asks what you are doing, reply that you are "Just looking." This works at retail stores, so there is no reason it shouldn't work here.
7. Tow car away
8. Here you have a choice to take your business in one of two directions:
    A. Sell the car.
    B. Let the owner have it back, but tell him it was parked illegally and charge a towing fee of $112.50
9. Repeat

Personal Note: From my observations, this business model seems to be working very well in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Make money throwing away Christmas trees (with options to GO GREEN!)

So a couple of weeks ago you bought a real Christmas tree...  how festive, how Chrismissy.  Let me be the first to thank you for 1) celebrating Christmas, 2) stimulating the economy, and 3) cutting down a tree (our greatest renewable resource).  Now that Christmas is done, your tree is dead, and all of the presents are opened and forgotten.... its time to take out the tree!  Needles, needles everywhere!  No one (at least that I know of) likes to take out their Christmas tree.  Thus, a good business opportunity for you.  People like to pay others money to do things they don't want to do.

Here is the step by step business plan:
1)knock on doors
2)find someone that is home
3)convince them they need you to take out their Christmas tree (if they're not convinced, do it anyway, they'll appreciate it and pay you big bucks)
4)take out tree
5)throw tree away
5a) going green option: save it for next year and sell it to some sucker who will feel good about reusing a poor murdered Christmas tree.  He will probably also buy your used Christmas wrapping paper (so don't forget to save it too).
6)vacuum up needles
6a) going green option: save needles and sell them to the same guy who bought the tree in step 5a
7)get paid
8)reinvest your money in your next $1 idea

This is a great business opportunity for townhouse and condo developments.  People don't really like walking down 3 flights of stairs with a dead Christmas tree.  Click here or here for other great business opportunities geared to condo and townhouse developments.

Business risks: atheists who hate Christmas, Barack Obama (Obama hates Christmas too) and the crazy old lady who keeps her tree up all year.

How to make money from your blog

Now that you have started a blog and promoted your blog... it is time to monetize your blog!  This site is all about how to make a dollar, so monetizing your blog is a great way to make a dollar.  One way to make money from your blog is to use Google's AdSense.    All you have to do is go to the AdSense website and sign up.  You don't need a bank account or credit card information.  All you need is a name, address, and blog.  So hopefully your parents gave you a name and you are not homeless.  When you earn at least $10 they will send you a check.

After you sign up and Google approves your account (may take up to a week) and you finalize the set up, Google sponsored advertisements will begin to appear on your account.  You may notice advertisements above and below this blog and on the side below our twitter gadget.  The advertisements are usually somehow connected to what you blog about.  When people click on these advertisements you get money.  Pretty simple.  When you sign up for AdSense you agree not to click on your own advertisements.  So if you don't want to end up in the Ethical Grey area of our blog, don't click on your own advertisements.  I'm pretty sure it gives you money only for "unique visitors."  So even if you get someone to click on your advertisements over and over, it will only pay you for the first time they click on it.  Now that you have advertisements on your blog you have even more incentive to generate traffic. So go start a blog and make some money.  Its free!

Make Money Off Swine Flu

A good way to make money is to take advantage of things that people are afraid of. Sell something that claims to eliminate or nullify the threat, and people will buy it.


Right now there are two things that everyone in the world is terrified of: Kimbo Slice, and Swine Flu. Unfortunately, Howtomakeadollar has not yet discovered an effective way of protecting people from Kimbo Slice, nor is it likely that anyone ever will. 


As for Swine Flu, we have two suggestions.

Sell "Vaccines"
1. Get a bunch of syringes from someone at craigslist. (Thats where I get all of mine)
2. Fill them up with a translucent liquid substance
3. Tell people it is a vaccine. You can even write: "Vaccine" on the side of the syringe with a Sharpie.
4. Tell people to form a line
5. Charge $100 per shot

Reverse Sponsorship
Many businesses will pay money to get their name on an event. For example, in college football, the Fiesta Bowl is called the "Tostitos Fiesta Bowl." I have no idea how much the Frito-Lay company pays to get their Tostitos brand on this game, but its probably at least a dollar, which we consider to be a lot. This kind of thing is very common.  
There is no reason this can't be done in reverse. Tostitos wants its name on the Fiesta Bowl, but I bet they don't want their name on Swine Flu. This is where you come in.


Here's how the business works
1. File a patent for Swine Flu. I'm about 50% sure that you can do this by claiming to have been the first person to catch it.
2. Good, now you own all rights to swine flu
3. Change its name to "The Tostitos Swine Flu," or "Tostitos Presents: Swine Flu."
4. Call all the news networks and tell them that Tostitos is now sponsoring Swine Flu.
5. Charge the Tostitos people a dollar to get their name taken off it.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 with a different company, such as Wal-Mart.


If you have any suggestions for protecting people from Kimbo Slice, please use the comment section below.
Thanks

How to Start a Business in 2010

I personally dare you to start a business this year. I dare you. Read on for two good ideas and one extremely important rule.

Warning: This blog post is not funny. It does not contain any jokes or humorous anecdotes. It is actually quite boring and very long. However, it contains the most important rule of starting a business, and provides two good business ideas. One that I've tried, another that I haven't.

How to start a business in 2010


The Rule: The best way to start a business is to start with as little risk as possible. Thats the most important rule. If you have a lot of money already, you probably don't need to be reading a blog about how to make a dollar. If you are a normal person who is afraid of the economy and wants to get started on a side business, then this is for you. The key, again, is to risk as little as possible at first. That's the most important rule. Don't risk anything at first. This gives you the freedom to try lots of ideas without the possibility of losing.

Thats because people who are just starting out are prone to making mistakes. Better that the mistake not cost you very much.

Idea 1: Snow Shoveling
When I was in college I was out of money. Completely out. All I had was a willingness to make money, and a little bit of time. I also had snow. So I found a snow shovel for $9.99 (which I needed anyway) and walked around town (my car was out of gas, and I had no more money after buying the shovel) looking for driveways that needed to be shoveled. I made over $100 that day. I risked $10, and made $90 in profit. I was happy with that, and I did it again the next two times it snowed. I made good money and then quit. Thats one way to do it.

But that was when I was in college. I had no intention of starting an actual business back then, so I just kept the money and did whatever I wanted with it.

Lets say you want to actually start this as a business and make it work long-term. Well, then you don't want to just keep the money. You want to reinvest it. Think about it. You now have $100.00. What can you do with $100 to help promote your business? Well, you can make an ad on a sheet of paper and make about 100 copies of it for about $20.00. and you can make about 100 business cards for another $10. Then you can go stick the ad in people's doorways and leave your card with anyone you bump into. Be friendly, and start in the same neighborhood that you've already worked. This way you can tell people that you already shoveled out their neighbors, and they will trust you more. Don't spend all $100 on advertising. You don't know how effective it will be, and you don't want to lose all of it. Again: don't risk any more than you have to.

Now you've advertised to 100 new potential customers for only about $30.00. Keep the other $70 in case you need to try a different advertising approach, or save it for the eventual purchase of a snow blower or plow.

Every penny that you earn should either be spent on expanding your business or should be saved for the purpose of buying better equipment in the future. I made $100 in one day, starting from nothing. No list of clients, no advertising. Nothing. I spent more time trying to find customers that actually shoveling. But after the first day I had a list of clients, and I didn't need to walk all over town again.

If you can get five or six snowstorms in your region, then you should easily make enough to buy a snow blower, which will allow you to work twice as fast. This in turn, will allow you to expand into new neighborhoods and eventually, to buy a plow. All of this with no money out of your pocket.

The point is to only spend money that you have already earned. Do not spend your own personal savings, or your paycheck from your regular job. Do not go into debt under any circumstances. Only expand your business when it has already earned enough to pay for the expansion in cash. This way you can never lose.

Shoveling is a seasonal job that can only be done by people who are able to work outside in the cold for a long time. What about an easier, year-round job?

Idea 2: How about baking cookies?
Here's how I would do it:
1. Get a big cookie mix from Costco or Sams or some place like that. Cost: $10
2. Get a silver dollar coin Cost: $24 (silver "dollars" are actually worth about $24)
3. Make ten batches of ten cookies, and mix the silver dollar into one of the cookies. (wash it first)
4. Put them in airtight ziplock freezer bags (or any other airtight contraption that will keep them from getting stale) Cost: $2
Total Cost: $36.00
Sell the homemade cookies on Ebay, and explain that there are ten batches, one of which contains a $24 piece of silver. Start bids at $10.00 each.

Assuming you can sell all ten batches, you will make a $64.00 profit. Many people will be willing to pay $10 for the cookies because at the very least they will still get a batch of homemade cookies. They don't risk much, so they won't mind trying it. It shouldn't take you more than an hour and half to make 100 cookies.

If you can do this once a week, you'll make $3,328 in a year. Obviously you could do this with any kind of prize. I think a silver dollar would work because they are small, valuable, and would not be damaged by being baked into a cookie. However, you could use just about anything that meets these criteria.

Invest your earnings back into your company and try to expand into other baking-related markets, or save your earnings and use them to start a completely different business that has a higher entry cost. Again: Don't risk anything that your business has not already earned.

The slogan of this blog is "Millions of ways to make a dollar." We believe that your first business idea probably won't make you a millionaire, and it probably won't even replace your day job. However, an extra stream of income every month can really add up, and can give you a little bit more leeway if your company cuts wages, or if your taxes go up. If you keep working at it, and if you try lots of ideas, you may stumble on one that can grow into something much bigger.

Throughout this year we will be posting various business ideas to help inspire you and to help you think creatively. Many of them will probably be goofy, and we can't promise that they will all work, but if you can just make one dollar, we will consider it a success.
I personally dare you to try a business in 2010. If you follow the rule in this post you won't have anything at risk. Give it a try. If you don't risk anything then you can't lose, so there is no reason not to try.