Low start up business ideas

[Glasgowrob]

ReaperCushions said:

Congrats OP for getting it off the ground. Nice to see a success story in the making actually happen.

Maybe a few others of us can take the baton from you now you are on your way as a way of keeping the thread alive?

My situation is somewhat different, but I'm after similar ideas.

I have around 2 hours per day free right now outside of my regular job that I think I can spend more productively.

I don't have huge amounts of space to store things, or any particular manual skill (Like being a mechanic). My day job is in sales and marketing.

Ideally, it would be something that I could spend those 2 hours a day in front of a computer. I'm also happy to invest some cash so doesn't have to be a super low startup idea.

I don't like the idea of these borderline scams (Matched betting, FX trading, Crypto trading) etc... As I'd like to build a sustainable business that provides some degree of passive income in the future, so a business rather than a second job (Data entry, uber driving etc)

Any bright ideas for internet-based startups you can do at home?

Tony Angelino said:

Much the same situation so I am watching too.

guys, drop me an email, have something you might be interested in

[illmonkey]

13aines said:

illmonkey said:

I've run a forum and a website selling a service much like drop shipping, but not, fully automated and just ticks along.

My aim was to have 5 or 6 of these, to bring in enough to think about going full time, then expanding 1 or 2, or doing something new. Typically, I lost focus on them and sales/revenue has dwindled, but they still tick along. Little upfront costs and the odd hosting bill was all my costs.

Would be interested to hear more about this

The forum is a car related one, there was a hole in the 'market' 10 years (wow!) ago, I have the skills (work in IT) to create a site and forum etc, so went for it. A lucky break got me visitors from a US equivalent and it just grew. Problem I'm facing now is that everyone is flocking to social media for this kind of stuff, not to mention the car model being fairly dated now.

The other one is a printing solution. We piggy back a massive online print company, who've given us a basic GUI we can skin. It all runs on their system, we just provide a few web pages, people then click to order and it goes to the printers skinned version. Order is fully automated to the point of putting the print into an envelope, but the printers do that! We take a cut for obtaining the order, not a lot, but it soon adds up.

[Zoon]

48k said:

Zoon said:

200Plus Club said:

paid £70 out to tip it (official).

Could you let me know where he tips?
Landfill tax is £88.95 a tonne alone, never mind tipping charges.

Where does landfill tax come in to it? He's cleared three gardens of rubbish and taken it to the tip so would be paying trade waste charges.

Eg. my local council charges £55 for up to 250KG of trade waste or £35 for clean green waste.

https://www.buckscc.gov.uk/services/waste-and-recy...

Yes and £168 per tonne on general waste which rubbish would be classed as.

[48k]

Zoon said:

48k said:

Zoon said:

200Plus Club said:

paid £70 out to tip it (official).

Could you let me know where he tips?
Landfill tax is £88.95 a tonne alone, never mind tipping charges.

Where does landfill tax come in to it? He's cleared three gardens of rubbish and taken it to the tip so would be paying trade waste charges.

Eg. my local council charges £55 for up to 250KG of trade waste or £35 for clean green waste.

https://www.buckscc.gov.uk/services/waste-and-recy...

Yes and £168 per tonne on general waste which rubbish would be classed as.

168 per tonne only once over 600kg.

[13aines]

illmonkey said:

The other one is a printing solution. We piggy back a massive online print company, who've given us a basic GUI we can skin. It all runs on their system, we just provide a few web pages, people then click to order and it goes to the printers skinned version. Order is fully automated to the point of putting the print into an envelope, but the printers do that! We take a cut for obtaining the order, not a lot, but it soon adds up.

Neat! Thanks for explaining.

[Zoon]

48k said:

Zoon said:

48k said:

Zoon said:

200Plus Club said:

paid £70 out to tip it (official).

Could you let me know where he tips?
Landfill tax is £88.95 a tonne alone, never mind tipping charges.

Where does landfill tax come in to it? He's cleared three gardens of rubbish and taken it to the tip so would be paying trade waste charges.

Eg. my local council charges £55 for up to 250KG of trade waste or £35 for clean green waste.

https://www.buckscc.gov.uk/services/waste-and-recy...

Yes and £168 per tonne on general waste which rubbish would be classed as.

168 per tonne only once over 600kg.

Which is more in line with my tipping costs albeit on a larger scale. Hence my original post.
It sounded very cheap.

[48k]

Zoon said:

48k said:

Zoon said:

48k said:

Zoon said:

200Plus Club said:

paid £70 out to tip it (official).

Could you let me know where he tips?
Landfill tax is £88.95 a tonne alone, never mind tipping charges.

Where does landfill tax come in to it? He's cleared three gardens of rubbish and taken it to the tip so would be paying trade waste charges.

Eg. my local council charges £55 for up to 250KG of trade waste or £35 for clean green waste.

https://www.buckscc.gov.uk/services/waste-and-recy...

Yes and £168 per tonne on general waste which rubbish would be classed as.

168 per tonne only once over 600kg.

Which is more in line with my tipping costs albeit on a larger scale. Hence my original post.
It sounded very cheap.

So - by your own admission you're operating at a larger scale than the OP's mate who is clearing gardens so it seems a bit bizarre to call it out for being cheap? I'd have thought it obvious that if you tip more you get charged more?

[200Plus Club]

As I said he did a few very basic garden tidied and got the lot in a transit van in one day. I've no reason to query him paying 70 quid. He's often earning £2-3k a week on scrap in 4.5 days when it's busy so quite often turns down most of the garden and house "st " jobs as he calls them or passes them to a mate for free.
Obviously on scrap the overheads are bigger for a drop side tipper with hiab lift, diesel, wages etc.

If I was in need of a few hrs/day a week for cash I think I'd be doing the same sort of thing, it seems decent money for helping folk and they also tip well for a good job:-)

Edited by 200Plus Club on Thursday 6th September 15:46

[Zoon]

48k said:

So - by your own admission you're operating at a larger scale than the OP's mate who is clearing gardens so it seems a bit bizarre to call it out for being cheap? I'd have thought it obvious that if you tip more you get charged more?

Not really, not all councils offer a trade waste tipping facility (not locally to me anyway) and commercial operators levy a minimum charge of one tonne which would incur landfill tax plus the gate fee.
So it does seem cheap, although we don't know what quantity of waste he got rid of.

[BelfastBlack]

I've been enjoying this thread and glad to see the OP made a go of it. I apologise in advance for my ramblings.

I've been giving serious consideration to doing a bit of gardening and power washing type work on the side since I already have access to most of the tools to get started. The only problem is that my wife says I have to finish our own garden before I run off to work on someone else's. We also have a 1 year old and my wife works a lot of evenings and nights so I need to be in/around the house on those nights after he goes to bed at 7pm.

I had thought about starting off doing grave plot restoration/upkeep since it might only take a couple of hours to transform and I wouldn't be committing to a large garden overhaul when I really don't have the time/skills/equipment. Of course the trick is to get a contract for ongoing upkeep so finding a plot who's relatives are half way around the world means they might be happy to know their granny's resting place is being cared for if you email a few photos every few months and upsell services like placing flowers on birthday and Christmas etc.

I'm also thinking long term and ultimately having a business that can grow organically and not demand I work all hours of the day has to be better. Make money while you sleep. While the gardening might be a good idea now when I'm fit and healthy and I'm still looking out at late summer sunshine, being older with a crippled back in the depths of winter means an online business is maybe more suitable. Storing widgets in the garage and selling them online is an idea but it will always a race to the bottom as someone will undercut on ebay. I also don't like the idea of my business being totally reliant on another i.e. Ebay/Paypal/Amazon change the rules and your business sinks.

Another opportunity I recently turned down is driving instructing. I have the contacts to get taught for free and my car is already suitable for learners including having dual controls available, however, you only earn when you're in the car and there's so much dead time with admin and between lessons that you'd struggle to bring home more than £15/hour after tax, insurance, maintenance. Admittedly, that's more than I'm currently earning but not so great if I'm still on that 10-15 years from now.

P.S. GlasgowRob I sent you a PM.

[vsonix]

JQ said:

supplying sandwiches and snacks to office workers. Get up early and have your day finished by 3pm. I suspect it's a very competitive market especially with the likes of Subway popping up everywhere.

Also the problem with doing this is that pre-made sandwiches is one of the first things people stop buying when they're feeling hard-up so if there's a blip in the economy or Xmas is looming and the kids want more Startrekwars figurines your business will suffer also. If you can serve hot lunches it's a little less prone to fluctuation as even when people are on their ass broke and it's a stty day, they find it hard to resist a hassle-free hot meal to set them up for the rest of the afternoon. But obviously burger vans etc have higher initial outlay, more expenses to set up, various hygiene certificates etc.

I was selling 'hipster coffee' i.e. gourmet beans wholesale for a while but the market went from emerging to oversaturated in next to no time and half the people I would have sold to have now gone bankrupt simply because the average office-worker round my way can't afford £4 for a cup of coffee every day.

If I was looking at mobile food or coffee I'd probably be looking more at doing events like car shows, music festivals etc etc.
Again though, you have to be able to buy your way in with your start-up budget being barely enough to secure a basic pitch at a high profile event. However the advantages are fairly obvious, not least that you'd probably make as much money over two or three whole days at a music festival as you would just selling lunch to office workers or industrial estate bods for a whole week.

Edited by vsonix on Saturday 8th September 12:04

[vsonix]

48k said:

cholo said:

Guy round here started a delivery service for Takeaways who don't do delivery (Including Macca D's KFC etc) as well as the small chains.

Very simple business and he seems to be doing ok..

Define "ok" though. Can't see him clearing £100 a day 5 days per week delivering McDonalds.

Also can't see this being all that sustainable when there is JustEat and Deliveroo already established doing exactly the same.
Unless you live somewhere so small it's not on their corporate radar yet.

[200Plus Club]

vsonix said:

Also the problem with doing this is that pre-made sandwiches is one of the first things people stop buying when they're feeling hard-up so if there's a blip in the economy or Xmas is looming and the kids want more Startrekwars figurines your business will suffer also. If you can serve hot lunches it's a little less prone to fluctuation as even when people are on their ass broke and it's a stty day, they find it hard to resist a hassle-free hot meal to set them up for the rest of the afternoon. But obviously burger vans etc have higher initial outlay, more expenses to set up, various hygiene certificates etc.

I was selling 'hipster coffee' i.e. gourmet beans wholesale for a while but the market went from emerging to oversaturated in next to no time and half the people I would have sold to have now gone bankrupt simply because the average office-worker round my way can't afford £4 for a cup of coffee every day.

If I was looking at mobile food or coffee I'd probably be looking more at doing events like car shows, music festivals etc etc.
Again though, you have to be able to buy your way in with your start-up budget being barely enough to secure a basic pitch at a high profile event. However the advantages are fairly obvious, not least that you'd probably make as much money over two or three whole days at a music festival as you would just selling lunch to office workers or industrial estate bods.

Good pitches at busy events used to be circa £500 A day over ten years ago. Burger vans were taking over £3k per van, similar for ice cream sales. You didn't get a pitch at any big event unless you knew who to go to well in advance and could pay up in front generally.
Don't know if it's changed much as it's still the same businesses at most events even now. Newcomers were given a crap area and struggled to cover their costs. Hard to break into the big/popular event scenes

[CoolHands]

Events are a no go I think. Anywhere that makes a load of money the organisers obviously know and out the price of the pitch up so they still get all the profit. Do you really think if they know a pitch makes £3k in a day they’re going charge 500 quid? I doubt it.

On topic I saw a small business cleaning a school ground the other day - van with large generator towed behind and he basically had a massive steam cleaner and scrubber thing that cleaned the floor areas outside, which are all flag stones? / like patio slab materials. Ie large commercial areas that need cleaning.

[200Plus Club]

CoolHands said:

Events are a no go I think. Anywhere that makes a load of money the organisers obviously know and out the price of the pitch up so they still get all the profit. Do you really think if they know a pitch makes £3k in a day they’re going charge 500 quid? I doubt it.

On topic I saw a small business cleaning a school ground the other day - van with large generator towed behind and he basically had a massive steam cleaner and scrubber thing that cleaned the floor areas outside, which are all flag stones? / like patio slab materials. Ie large commercial areas that need cleaning.

Quite often the event organiser wants nothing to do with it once the rent is paid up front and in advance for the pitch. The risk is totally with the van owners then, poor weather/bad turn out don't break even. Organisers still get same guaranteed pay for no work. I've had some experience in this field :-)

[200Plus Club]

Carpet cleaning - as it happens a pair of ladies did our hallway carpet today, £40 And 45 mins work in and out. One small van, one machine, some reasonable physical effort and adequate customer skills.
Out of interest I asked and she does no advertising now it's all generated by word of mouth originally driven by a straightforward Facebook page.
£10 ph perhaps to accomplice leaving £30per hr before any costs.

[Tony Angelino]

Hoofy said:

Tony Angelino said:

ReaperCushions said:

Congrats OP for getting it off the ground. Nice to see a success story in the making actually happen.

Maybe a few others of us can take the baton from you now you are on your way as a way of keeping the thread alive?

My situation is somewhat different, but I'm after similar ideas.

I have around 2 hours per day free right now outside of my regular job that I think I can spend more productively.

I don't have huge amounts of space to store things, or any particular manual skill (Like being a mechanic). My day job is in sales and marketing.

Ideally, it would be something that I could spend those 2 hours a day in front of a computer. I'm also happy to invest some cash so doesn't have to be a super low startup idea.

I don't like the idea of these borderline scams (Matched betting, FX trading, Crypto trading) etc... As I'd like to build a sustainable business that provides some degree of passive income in the future, so a business rather than a second job (Data entry, uber driving etc)

Any bright ideas for internet-based startups you can do at home?

Much the same situation so I am watching too.

If it's a business rather than a second job, I'd think about scalability and how you can take what you can do well and move it into a scalable business that ultimately means you can sit back and sleep while people throw money at you.

Thanks for the reply, neither my Mrs or myself have any particular specific skills - our day jobs are sales and accounts administration. We are competent on computers enough to get by but have no knowledge of programming or design.

Other half works 3 days a week and has a couple of days that she could fill doing something, we are both fairly reasonably accurate and conscientious but probably not enough to do proof reading or anyhing like that (just waiting now for somebody to pull my posts to bits!). We are both hard working and could be 'trusted' to work alone either for ourselves or for somebody else if one of these 'work from home' jobs actually existed.

[Hoofy]

Tony Angelino said:

Hoofy said:

Tony Angelino said:

ReaperCushions said:

Congrats OP for getting it off the ground. Nice to see a success story in the making actually happen.

Maybe a few others of us can take the baton from you now you are on your way as a way of keeping the thread alive?

My situation is somewhat different, but I'm after similar ideas.

I have around 2 hours per day free right now outside of my regular job that I think I can spend more productively.

I don't have huge amounts of space to store things, or any particular manual skill (Like being a mechanic). My day job is in sales and marketing.

Ideally, it would be something that I could spend those 2 hours a day in front of a computer. I'm also happy to invest some cash so doesn't have to be a super low startup idea.

I don't like the idea of these borderline scams (Matched betting, FX trading, Crypto trading) etc... As I'd like to build a sustainable business that provides some degree of passive income in the future, so a business rather than a second job (Data entry, uber driving etc)

Any bright ideas for internet-based startups you can do at home?

Much the same situation so I am watching too.

If it's a business rather than a second job, I'd think about scalability and how you can take what you can do well and move it into a scalable business that ultimately means you can sit back and sleep while people throw money at you.

Thanks for the reply, neither my Mrs or myself have any particular specific skills - our day jobs are sales and accounts administration. We are competent on computers enough to get by but have no knowledge of programming or design.

Other half works 3 days a week and has a couple of days that she could fill doing something, we are both fairly reasonably accurate and conscientious but probably not enough to do proof reading or anyhing like that (just waiting now for somebody to pull my posts to bits!). We are both hard working and could be 'trusted' to work alone either for ourselves or for somebody else if one of these 'work from home' jobs actually existed.

Freelance sales for small businesses. You work from home, use your mobile phone/free minutes. Make cold calls on behalf of small businesses for some hours per week. Work for a few small businesses to make a full time income.

The jobs are out there. You don't live in SW London do you?

Scalability - once you get too many clients, you farm the work out to stay at home mums, part-timers etc.

[Glasgowrob]

emails sent over to anyone that mailed me, might not be for everyone but hopefully it will click for someone.

if I've missed anyone give me a shout

[dugt]

Zoon said:

48k said:

Zoon said:

200Plus Club said:

paid £70 out to tip it (official).

Could you let me know where he tips?
Landfill tax is £88.95 a tonne alone, never mind tipping charges.

Where does landfill tax come in to it? He's cleared three gardens of rubbish and taken it to the tip so would be paying trade waste charges.

Eg. my local council charges £55 for up to 250KG of trade waste or £35 for clean green waste.

https://www.buckscc.gov.uk/services/waste-and-recy...

Yes and £168 per tonne on general waste which rubbish would be classed as.

Find the biggest skip company around, some of them let you bring waste to them if you have a waste carriers license