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Part-time, low-risk business ideas you can implement from home
By Anthony Rogers
Part-time, low-risk business ideas you can implement from home
Starting a home business, like any other new endeavor, requires time and patience. There is a lot of information. So take your time, read the books, learn the lingo, and as you do so, all the puzzle pieces will fall into place, and you’ll wonder what seemed so overwhelming in the first place!
This article is meant to spur your creativity – to give you several ideas of what you can do from home with minimal upfront investment or risk. The next article will be an actual outline of steps to help you get your idea off the ground. But first things first – we don’t want to put the cart before the horse!
So let’s set the groundwork. You’re a typical homeschool family, living off one income. The current state of the economy seems to be demanding two incomes – but that is out of the question (as if schooling your own children isn’t already a full time job!). So you’d like to earn some income on the side, but don’t have the major financial resources or time necessary to get a traditional business off the ground.
Enter the internet. The internet is the great leveling force of the commercial playing-field. This day in age, with the proper know-how, anyone with a minimal computer system, an internet connection and some substantial elbow-grease (in this case, finger-grease!) can set up an online business that is indistinguishable in quality from a major industry competitor. The potential customer doesn’t need to know that your business consists of a corner of the living room!
The key phrase in the previous paragraph was elbow-grease. There are no simple, overnight solutions. Anything you do will take dedication. But as you will see, some of these ideas may very well incorporate something you already do, and you simply didn’t realize the income potential.
Without further ado, let’s see these ideas!
- Turn your writing into income with advertising (already have a blog?)
- Turn your writing into income by selling articles
- Sell a product with no upfront cost via drop shipping
- Selling products on eBay
Turn your writing into income with advertising
Do you enjoy writing? Do you already have a blog? – and if not, can you dedicate a couple of hours a week to writing?
If you’re a good writer, and can produce useful, entertaining articles, then you can begin generating income doing something you enjoy. If you already have a blog or website that receives substantial traffic, then the hard part is already done! Another hour or two, and that site can begin to work for you.
The trick is in affiliate marketing and ads. You’ve probably seen those links on many websites that say “Ads by Google” at the bottom. Or a book recommendation that takes you to Amazon. Just what are these?
Advertising
Let’s look at advertising first. Google has developed a major advertising network called Adsense. Here’s how it works:
- A vender wants to promote his service or product to a targeted market.
- The vender signs up with Google and sets up their ads, along with a set of keywords.
- The webmaster/blogger of a site puts a small script on their pages; Google analyzes the content of their site, and automatically places ads that match the site’s content, based on the vender’s keywords.
- Every time someone clicks on one of the ads, a certain amount of money is detracted from the vender’s account. Google takes a portion of that money, and passes the rest on to the webmaster/blogger, who has a receiving account. One click is worth anywhere from a couple of cents to several dollars.
The great thing about this is that Google has made it extremely easy to use. In literally less than 30 minutes, you can set up a receiving account with no obligations whatsoever, and post the small script on your site, and instantly begin generating revenue.
How much revenue? Well, this is where the elbow-grease comes in. Consider an example amount of $0.025 per visitor. You would have to have 800 visitors a day to generate $20 per day. For a small site or blog, that is a lot of visitors! It is very possible to get up and beyond that much traffic however. It takes time and consistency in adding content. It also depends on the particular subject your site is about. Some keywords generate far more per click than others, due to the auction-style method Google uses to set prices. If a word is more popular, it will generate more revenue per click. Of course, before you go out and try to find which keywords are the most popular, keep in mind that normal market forces are at work here, and any advantage will probably be cancelled out by more aggressive competition!
Affiliate Marketing
Many companies offer affiliate programs. One of the most popular is Amazon, but it is far from the only one! Affiliate programs work by giving a referrer a cut of the profit for a sale made. Using Amazon as the example; when you sign up with their affiliate program, you receive a special link code. If you review a book on your site, and provide a link to Amazon to buy the book using your link code, you will receive a portion of the sale if someone clicks your link, and ends up buying the book.
Again, as with Google’s Adsense, the trick here is developing traffic to your site. You need patience, great content and some basic internet marketing savvy to be successful with either method.
Turn your writing into income by selling articles
This also is an industry that has exploded because of the internet. Websites need content, and content needs authors! This has opened up a massive market for freelance authors. Do you know a particular subject very well? Can you write about it? If so, then you’ve got it made. In the next article I’ll share with you some very easy ways to tap into this market. Freelance rates vary widely – anywhere from $0.01 per word to several dollars per word (if you become very popular!). If you’re a decent writer and skilled typist, you could realistically expect to make $30/hour or more.
Sell a product with no upfront cost via drop shipping & Selling products on eBay
These two are bit more complex, and their realization will be more like a traditional business than the two previous ideas. To retail any products directly, you must have a business license, pay business taxes, and jump through all the legal hoops properly. But before we get our hands dirty with all of that, let’s see what drop shipping actually is!
Here’s how it works:
- You (the “retailer”) set up a storefront website to sell your products.
- You have a drop ship account with a distributor of those products.
- When a customer orders a product from you, you forward the order to the distributor, who then ships the product directly to the customer.
- You take the difference between wholesale price and retail price as profit.
The benefit of this model should be obvious! You don’t have to buy any of your inventory of front. In fact, you don’t have to buy anything at all with your own money – because you don’t even order the product till you have the customer’s payment in your account!
What it does take up front is a major investment of time. Setting up a business correctly and learning the ins and outs of internet commerce is a major endeavor. But, as with most things in life, the reward will match the investment!
Expect to do a lot of reading. Reading on marketing, building a website, finding suppliers, and much more. You’ll have to learn the lingo – what is a domain name? A merchant account? A sole proprietorship?
But, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, if you take it patiently, one step at a time, it isn’t as complicated as it sounds.
Utilizing eBay
If you aren’t quite ready to make that big a jump, you can get a taste of business with eBay. You will still need a business license and accounts with wholesalers (easy to do!), but you won’t need to build a website, or worry about the technical details of accepting payments over the internet (somewhat difficult!). Not to mention that eBay comes with its own traffic!
Selling on eBay via drop shipping works much in the same way as a full fledged retail business does. You set up your account with a wholesale distributor, you post the product on eBay; an eBay user buys the product, you take your cut and forward the order to the distributor. The distributor ships the product directly to the buyer.
In Closing...
In the next article I will dive into the technical details of implementing these ideas. In the meantime, why don’t you go buy yourself a book on starting a business!
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