I bought a list of 1000 ways to make money a while back and I think it could help some of you out. I really don't want to be sued so I'm not just going to post the link. If you are interested pm me and I will send it to your email address.
Once you get it feel free to list the one's that you like on here. Below are just a few that I picked out.
Almost everyone realizes that a newsletter is a great way to keep in touch with your customers.
Companies that regularly communicate with their clients have a much higher retention rate
than those that don't. Unfortunately, most companies, professionals, service firms, etc. do not have
the time to create a quality newsletter. This is where you come in. You can offer to create a highquality,
monthly newsletter full of useful relevant information for their clients. And you can offer
to perform this service MUCH cheaper than they can do it themselves. Why? First of all, you've
got no overhead. You can write this from your home. Second, you can recycle a lot of the same
material you create for other clients! In other words, if you've got 10 lawfirm clients in 10 different
states, you could basically run the same articles in all 10 newsletters since there's going to be
no reader duplication. My attorney friends have told me that they would gladly pay $1,000 a
month for someone to provide this service for them. Just 10 clients at that rate amounts to
$120,000 a year!
Why not run a car fair? This could be a weekly event, providing a place where people can
bring their vehicles to sell privately. You'll need to find a reasonable-sized parking lot and arrange
to lease it, say on Saturdays or whenever you decide to hold the fair. Charge each seller a modest
fee... $20 or so... to rent a site for the day. Provide each owner with an attractive sign on which
they can write details of their vehicle and display it in the window. You'll need to advertise the fair
initially but once it becomes an established event, word of mouth will do the rest. The fairs could
become a popular attraction in your town or neighborhood.
I wish this service existed. That means there are probably millions of other people who wish
this service existed too. The first person who does it will have a good business. I would call it a
"Send-a-Card" service. You call the service, tell the operator the occasion, the name and address
of the recipient, what words you want to say, etc. They take your credit card information and bill
you $19.95 or whatever. The service then selects the appropriate greeting card, writes your message,
and mails it to your intended recipient. You'll never have to go to Hallmark again! You'll
probably want to give customers the option of sending funny, serious, romantic, "belated", offthe-
wall, or religious cards, and you might also offer an overnight service via Federal Express for
emergency situations!
You've probably seen private mailboxes services like "Mail Boxes, Etc." Have you ever wondered
how much money they make? It's staggering. Most private mailbox services charge $20 per
month (or more) for a box, and with just 300 boxes or so, you're making $72,000 a year sorting a
few pieces of mail every day. As long as your clients fill out the USPS Authorized Mail Agent
form, it's perfectly legal to accept mail for other people. But there's also the income from express
services, sale of shipping boxes, making copies, making keys, and other small business services.
This would be a very easy business to start, and aside from the initial start-up costs of the mailboxes,
your only real expense would be rent.
You've probably seen books like "Who's Who in America" or "Who's Who in the East", etc.
This is a very interesting business model because almost everyone listed will want to own a copy.
Well, there's no reason why you couldn't do a "Who's Who in Your State" or "Who's Who in Your
Industry". The listees would very likely buy a copy, for $39.95 or so, and you should be able to
sell 1,000 or so without too much trouble.
One of the most interesting newspapers in the world is the US Federal Government's paper
called "Commerce Business Daily". (It used to be available online at gpo.gov, but now they've
created a special website, fedbizopps.gov for it.) This contains all the government contracts (over
$25,000) and bid solicitations. It's fascinating reading. And if you have the ability to provide any
of the services or products mentioned in the bid requests, you've got a good chance of being
selected. Many bids are special "set-asides" for small business, meaning that you'll be given preferential
treatment if you're competing against a big corporation. If you're the lowest bidder, you'll
be given the job, and sometimes the amounts are staggering. If you'd bid $249 million to provide
public relations services for the National Institute of Health, you probably would have been
awarded the contract. The winning bidder was an outfit in Washington that bid the ridiculously
high amount of $250 million. But since it was the low bidder, it got the award! Could you provide
this service for $200 million and keep the $49 million profit? Of course! For $200,000,000 you
could hire 2,000 employees at $50,000 a year and still have $100 million to spend! And there are
bid requests for everything under the sun from writing a script for a video about SIDS to building
an entire penitentiary. It's definitely worth a look!
In any city, there are large 1930's and 1940's buildings built entirely out of brick. In areas
where there's lots of traffic, you can convert these buildings into huge billboards with a $5,000
digital projector. Just approach the building owners and ask if they'd be interested in an additional
revenue opportunity. Let them know that you will find advertisers and do all the work, and you'll
split the revenues 50/50. Many of them will agree to this arrangement. Then, approach companies
that are already advertising on local billboards and let them know that you can give them bigger
and better exposure for HALF of what they're paying for a billboard. Billboards range in price
from $3,000 to $50,000 a month, so it's hard to put a figure on how much money you can earn, but if you can attract 10 advertisers, there's no reason why you couldn't gross $25,000 a month with
this idea.
I like these billion-dollar ideas. Here's one that would probably work, and no one is doing it.
If you've flown in the past few years, you know that almost every plane has little television monitors
throughout the cabin, mostly for showing movies, the passenger safety demonstration, etc.
But this is an untapped goldmine. You could start a branded "airline channel", which would be a
one to two-hour general interest television show, and which would be updated every week. You
could deliver your show to the airline via videotape, allowing them to make as many duplicates as
they need for all their planes. (Or you could provide the copies yourself. With just one tape
needed per plane, this would be a minor expense.) If you could do a 2-hour show, that would be at
least 40 thirty-second commercials you could sell every week. At $25,000 a commercial, you'd be
seriously undercutting broadcast television rates, but you'd be providing advertisers with over
1,000,000 viewers, mae that CAPTIVE viewers. You could split this million dollars worth of
additional weekly revenue with the airline 50/50. Now... move on to the next airline! We're talking
serious potential here!
Very often, city governments that own buildings (either by default or from previous use) will
often make entrepreneurs "sweetheart deals", if the entrepreneur can demonstrate a way of turning
that building into jobs. The city is also interested in getting that property back on the tax rolls, and
if it's completely vacant anyway, it doesn't make much sense for them to hang onto it. You'd think
that these types of buildings would be sold at auction (and sometimes they are), but often they are
sold based on who you know and what you plan to do with the building. I have an acquaintance in
Louisville who bought a multi-million dollar property "free and clear" from the city for $75,000
because he planned to make it a medical clinic. These kinds of deals ARE available if you're persistent
and know how to play the game.
Every year, potentially valuable trademarks expire. Even nationally recognized brands are
sometimes left to expire simply because the parent company no longer has a need for them. Yes,
millions of dollars are spent to promote a brand and then it's left to wither and die. By doing yourhomework and watching the trademark office's database regularly (
www.uspto.gov), you can grab
expiring trademarks, just as you would expiring domain names. You will have to file a trademark
application and pay about $400 as an application fee, but if it's approved, you have a commodity
that you can sell for BIG BUCKS to competing companies who could take best advantage of the
brand's name recognition. Yes, this takes a bit of work, but the potential rewards could be huge!
homework and watching the trademark office's database regularly (
www.uspto.gov), you can grab
expiring trademarks, just as you would expiring domain names. You will have to file a trademark
application and pay about $400 as an application fee, but if it's approved, you have a commodity
that you can sell for BIG BUCKS to competing companies who could take best advantage of the
brand's name recognition. Yes, this takes a bit of work, but the potential rewards could be huge!
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