/diy/ - Do It Yourself

[Anonymous No.461776]

ITT: tips, ideas and general discussion about starting a business with very little/no money or education.

Only legit stuff.

[Anonymous No.461778]

Start a firm that rents out substitute manpower.

You find people who are able to work on day to day missions in some field. You find other businesses that need a substitute for a few days. The company then pays you a fee for each day they use said person. In the fee the following are included:

- Salary for the person
- Your profit (but you call it something more fancy)

This is attractive in a lot of country because using people for short term work is cheaper than hiring on a permanent basis.

[Anonymous No.461780]

what kind of business

[Anonymous No.461782]

>>461780

Anything, really, as long is it's a) legit, and b) doesn't require you to have a lot of money or some specialized education.

[Anonymous No.461787]

>>461778

Could be profitable, but then you need to find some field where the demand for temporary substitutes is high, and where businesses or institutions are willing to pay more than actual salary every day.

In the EU, it will be more difficult to make it profitable because a new directive requires these companies to pay substitutes the same as if they were permanently hired. This drives the prices up, so the demand needs to be sky-high.

In Norway, thanks to our waaaay too generous welfare system, it's VERY profitable if you deliver personell to schools or kindergardens. They need adults (doesn't even have to be educated), and they'll take about anything as long as you can deliver on short notice.

[Anonymous No.461813]

>starting your own business
>legit
>doesn't require education
>small startup capital
Pick two.

[Anonymous No.461822]

>>461813

A one man business could be both legit and profitable. If you only have the right ideas.

[Anonymous No.461835]

>>461776
i've been starting businesses since i was in high school and you need some sort of specialized education. not only that, but very few people capable of "working for themselves" without a boss over their shoulder.
anyway, here's some chump ideas that takes no money/education, provided you already own the materials.
car washing
lawn mowing
taxi driving
lemonade stand

[Anonymous No.461848]

>>461776

You can't without any "capital"/money

/thread.

[Anonymous No.462122]

>>461822
You would have to be skilled or have a starting capital for it to be profitable

[Anonymous No.462134]

Here is my thought on starting a small overnight floor cleaning company.
>most businesses have that 12x12 lenolium floor tile, grocery and other retail outlets anyway. that stuff needs to be stripped and waxed periodically, it takes a little skill.
>open checking account for busniess in busness name or whatever, all expenses come out of this account, whatever is left is for paying yourself.
>get 0% interest for 12-18 mo. credit card
>purchase equipment required (should fall under the 5k-10k spending limit of the card)
>buy a van to put everything in (minivans are cheap and reliable, I like dodge caravans/ grand caravans/ chrysler town and country)
>go around to stores and ask to speak to the store manager and show him how bad his floors look.
>Offer to do it overnight/ over a weekend so it won't interrupt his business at all.
>If he says that he already has somebody, ask how reliable they are, how happy he is with the service, and if he feels like he's getting a good deal.
>find one or two family members or friends who could use extra cash every so often by doing over night floor cleaning
>eventually hire an employee or two
>eventually branch out to carpet cleaning, window washing, power washing, ect.
>eventually hire a manager to manage day to day stuff
> eventually open in another region
>eventually go public
>etc.

[Anonymous No.462222]

>>461776
"no education"

does this mean an idiots job, or are you willing to actually invest time to learn?

if its the prior...well... have fun flipping burgers

[Anonymous No.462231]

>>462222
Anon, non-OP.

I'm keeping an eye on this thread for my own interests. Anyway, I'm interested in investing the time learning.

In my case, ideally, the job can be learned in one-two weeks time, 16 hours a day of learning.

But that's ideally. ;P

[Anonymous No.462405]

Okay guys. Here my idea. I wouldn't normally tell this idea to people but yall don't live near me so I wont lose any business once I start up.

Heres what im going to make a business off of.

Ready?

Cat Tower.

Thats right, a plywood Cat Tower covered in carpet. This shit is seriously marked up at retail stores. I found a local ad of a guy making Cat Towers for clients. I called him, asking for quotes pretending to be interested in purchasing a tower for my cat ( I dont have a cat) he charges around:

5ft 3'' 230$
3ft 120$

Being myself whos been looking for a part-time job for quite some time for some extra cash, I could just make a couple towers a week and sell them.

I could start to create a strong business model and branch off from first having an ad on craigslist to going to large street sales / yard sale type places and sell them there.

I already have a ton of old wood lying around, plus I already have the contact cement for carpet and a staple gun. All I need now is some old carpet ( Which I already plasted with ads on my local ad site looking for throw aways I can scavenge and use. I've also talked to a few local flooring stores if they have throw away remnants. )


Meow please let me know what you guys think.

[Anonymous No.462409]

>>462405

Being unemployed I have so much time on my hands. I just got back from cutting down a small maple tree by the tracks ( and having my skin turn to the consistency of a warm potato left in the sun too long and continued to peel off with each mighty strike with my axe)

I'll be drying this in the sun and making homemade tabaco pipes for myself and to sell if I get good and make extras.

Just need to get the stem, which Im thinking I should use bone. Just need to go kill some stray cats for that.

[Anonymous No.462412]

>>462409

Brb 20 mins, got to go carry back the log on my shoulder.

TFW illegal logging

[Anonymous No.462416]

You have a lot of wood? Try make cheap coffins. People won't stop diying, so there is always growing market.

[Anonymous No.462417]

>>462405
Imbue it with the scent of catnip. That way when people buy it they'll be all like "holy shit my cat loves this for some reason you must have some kind of cat tower superpower or something", plus it might actually encourage the cat to use it. You could also add a little ball on a string with a bell with catnip in. Have mildly differentiated models (like a deluxe and a normal one), one of which is sold at some kind of margin, the other at an inflated price similar to your rival's one.

[Anonymous No.462429]

>>462416
Somewhat this. One business that will never stop going is funeral services.

[Anonymous No.462437]

>>462417

Excellent idea! The ad site which I use has the option of paying a small fee ( like 10-20$ ) to get your ad on the front page which I also plan to do if I get good at it.

The catnip in the tower is great, plus I was going to buy some twine and wrap it up one of the legs of the tower. Just not sure where to get some cheap twine from.

Cheers to making our own businesses!

[Anonymous No.462438]

>>462416

Also excellent idea. I suppose clients would be contacting a local morgue. Possibly making a cheap pine coffin would be suitable.

[Anonymous No.462476]

>>462405
Seriously... Listen to me.

Get carpet that has a nice look t it. I have all these hipster friends that hate their cat towers because they're gaudy and stupid looking. Spend some time on the design and make it look 'modern.'

Anything other than shitty plain ol' boxy towers.

[Anonymous No.462481]

>>462476

Flashy was never my idea. I want some type of plain, generic carpet. Like baesh.. baesh? how ever the fuck you spell it. Like that color.

[Anonymous No.462485]

Tree Trimming. People will pay ridiculous amounts for you to trim their overgrown trees. Haul the branches away, cut the big pieces into firewood, sell the firewood. My friend and I did this when we got laid off and made anywhere from $800 -$1500 each a week. That takes a big workload though. We had to constantly be out finding work if we didn't have anything lined up. Scope out neighborhoods with a lot of overgrown trees and put flyers on doors, signs on corners, hand out cards, and put up flyers in businesses. $50 for small trees (6-10 ft, not too much growth) $100 for medium (10-15 ft, moderate growth) and after those sizes it's your call. Don't lowball yourself though. Charge big if you feel you need to because huge trees are a huge job.

[Anonymous No.462504]

>>462481
beige

[Anonymous No.462508]

>>462481
>baesh.. baesh

Are you drunk? Because you are talking with a bit of a slur....

Beige would be what you are hunting for, I believe.

And >>462476 is right. If you make them boring and "baesh" they will not sell for as much or be interesting enough for people to spread word about your creations. If you want to make money making something that already exists and is readily available, competing on price is rarely the way to go. Instead make it interesting and noteworthy, and charge a premium.

[Anonymous No.462510]

>>462508

he said make sure its not "gaudy" which is flashy, vibrant, obnoxious.

I think a modern look, like beige or another simple color would work well.

Just not a carpet with all kinds of designs all over it.... Or maybe that is what I want?

This will be solved in time. I dont even have any carpet to use now.

[GreenGC No.462519]

Well, its not just education..many times those of us that went into a business went into it because of experience in that field.. not necessarily education.

If you are handy, self-employed carpenters can make some good money doing 'handyman' work like basic wood repair. A former employee does this, he gets referred by realtors to do all of the little repairs needed after a house gets inspected..makes 50k a year or so... not a bad gig. It requires some basic skills and takes very little money and if you don't know something you have the internet on your phone to figure it out in no time. It's how I got started to an extent.

[Anonymous No.462523]

Just FYI for the cat tower bros, carpet comes in all god damned kinds of colors/patterns.

You won't get the small amounts you want at home depot/lowe's however. They won't cut them that small at it will be expensive. Take a trip to the flea market or to a local mom/pop carpet store and ask if they have any remnants for sale.

I own a flooring store and I sell pieces that could cover a cat tower easily (5x6, 3x7, etc.) for around $10-15. If it's some shitty thin beige color, I'll let it go for $5 if it's close to lunch time.

I'm trying to break into the cat tower business, but don't think there's a demand in my town for it. Good luck!

[Anonymous No.462524]

>>462510
Beige isn't modern, it's boring and bland.

Hell, people use the word beige as a synonym for bland.

Mass manufactured goods are designed to be boring, so that everyone thinks they will fit in their style. When you make something to appeal to everyone, you end up stripping out anything that makes it interesting, in fear only part of your audience will like it.

That's the advantage of small shops, they can fill the niches and make things that some people will hate but others will LOVE.

When you are only selling a few a week, you can target a market and make something truly special, something that matches your audience's taste to the point that they would never consider buying any cat tower other than the ones you are selling, and they will be willing to pay a premium for them.

Make cat towers shaped like castles or robots or rockets and parents will buy them for their kids, make them dual purposed with built in shelves or plant holders, or make them with modern colors and designs to make them look natural sitting near designer furniture. Look to pinterest and google for inspiration.

http://pinterest.com/catfurniture/

https://www.google.com/search?q=designer+cat+tower&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og

Just don't make them with boxy platforms and boxes and beige carpet, or no one will care. Sure, you might sell a few based on price, but your business will die when you exhaust the 5 people on craigslist looking for cheap handmade cat towers. Make something cool, and your customers will tell their friends, spread the word, share photos on facebook and pintrest, and if you are any good you will get more orders than you can fill.

[Anonymous No.462527]

>>462524
Case in point, pic related is a designer tower that sells for ~$2000

http://www.wohnblock.com/retro-cat-configurator-en.html

They also have a book case version that sells for much more.

Or this for about $800 :
http://www.pet-interiors.de/en/artikel.php?anr=223001&neueWaehrung=USD

Or, I guess you could compete with walmart and sell a beige standard cat tower:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Armarkat-52-Faux-Fur-Cat-Tree-in-Beige-Cats/12393114?findingMethod=rr

Theirs is about $50 for a fairly large model. Not much profit there.....

[Anonymous No.462547]

>>462527

I get what your saying. Something like this looks absolutley great. I'd have a lot of fun building it too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z8BWp6foXOU

Case in point, ive never built a cat tower before. So the first few will be generic carpeted ones and i'll sniff around the cat tower business and see how marketable it is.

Once I get my foot in the door and my shit together i'll start investing in very nice towers like in this video. I'd have to make special jigs and get nice woods to stain and varnish etc for something like that.

Even better, getting a nice tower like that one could contact local furniture stores to see if you could make a contract to build them towers.

Theres a local flooring store I talked to a few days ago that said they usually have rolled carpet remnants they throw away in the garbage out back that im going to try and get my hands on.

[Anonymous No.462567]

>>462527
$2000 for that shit? Really? A jigsaw or a router and you could make that crap in a couple of hours.

These catfags have a lot of money.

[Anonymous No.462568]

>>462547
The ones we throw away are the ones that we take out of the homes. Usually gross/pee'd on carpets.

You're looking for the ones that they sell. The small pieces of the new carpet that were left over after the install.

You don't want pee'd on carpet. Trust me.

[Anonymous No.462576]

>>462567
>$2000 for that shit? Really? A jigsaw or a router and you could make that crap in a couple of hours.

Exactly my point, quite the profit margin!

Got me thinking I should get into this. I could carve out one of those on my CNC router in a few minutes, some sanding, paint, and some carpet pieces (probably worth buying some finished ones, like small door mats or something) and I have the equivalent of that overpriced designer model.

I could make several of those in an afternoon....

[Anonymous No.462581]

>>462547

Thinking again my town is a huge blue-collar town so they'res not a lot of big income people. Designer towers would be awesome for me to make but it would be a smaller niche here unless I went to places like Toronto or Ottawa where its much more marketable.

[Anonymous No.462593]

>>462576

Question.

What kind of paint do you use, or what method to achieve a result like that tower or like this black painted furniture?

http://www.jellypin.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/How-to-paint-furniture-black-to-get-that-high-end-Pottery-Barn-esque-look.jpg


In my experience with black paint, It never turns out so precise and even and has brush marks.

[Anonymous No.462596]

>>462593
To get that effect you need thin coats of good paint, sanding between layers, steel wool rubbing and a top protective clear coat (satin finish, not gloss for the effect in your pic).

Or, you could use spray paint.

[Anonymous No.462597]

>>462593
Why the fuck would you use that retarded pic instead of the one in your link?
Might get more help if you don't make people follow a stupid link to get your point.
And look at the pic's URL... the question is right there. Probably answered at the blog it's hosted on.
idiot.

[Anonymous No.462598]

>>462597

If you have nothing nice to say, or dont have anything productive to share. Dont talk.

[Anonymous No.462959]

>>461778
Have a relative who was working for such a "temp agency" in London. Very profitable business for "last minute" replacements. Worker got £12ish an hour and the agency got £4 on top. Plus, all workers/businesses signed a contract whereby if the worker was to be employed on a permanent basis the agency got a fat chunk of their pay cheque.

However, in most modern cities, such agencies already exist. The only market gap I can see would be for manual labour in rural/industrial regions. If you're in America this type of temp work is done by illegals, so..

[Anonymous No.463519]

When I was 17 I started building custom sheds and landscaping for people. I'd do everything from pouring a concrete sidewalk in someone's back yard, pouring a concrete slab for a shed, to planting flowers and laying mulch. Did all the drafting and design myself.

Granted, it wasn't entirely 'legit'. I wasn't legal, I was uninsured, didn't report any of my earning to the IRS ever, and to be completely honest whenever I had a larger project I would occasionally pay these two greasy hoodlums that I knew to steal some of the materials or parts for a fraction of the cost.

[Anonymous No.463534]

i am lithuanian living and working in Denmark. I am thinking about buying old washing machines and other stuff and trucking it down to Lithuania. Hire some guy who can fix them and then sell them. I got this idea, because couple of weeks ago a washing machine at my work broke down. I bet it was easy to fix stuff, but my boss just threw it out and bought new one.

[Anonymous No.463537]

what about making pools, sidewalks, fences, small buildings like garages and sheds. It is not a rocket science and if you live near the big ass city with lots of suburbs and villages around, you can have a nice little business. If you do quality work, word would spread around from neighbor to neighbor. Could buy some advertising time on local radio or tv and newspapers

[Anonymous No.463566]

>>461776
>very little/no money or education
LOL not much. Food cart? Recycling? Junk hauling? Landscape maintenance?

[Anonymous No.463576]

>>462598

4chan is the opposite of PC. People come here to get away from it. So fuck off.

[Anonymous No.463637]

My dad is uneducated and barely graduated high school. He used to be a captain for big oil tankers when he was younger. That takes a lot out of you so when he got older, he had to find a new profession. The sort of experience he had running those ships didn't really transfer well in to any other field other than running other ships. So he just sorta became a jack-of-all-trades.

He's a self-employed carpenter. He did that shit before he was even on boats so he already had a lot of experience. Not really relevant to this thread, but he's never had any formal education. He also says that the majority of the stuff he does isn't difficult technical work that requires education/knowledge, but more hard labor. He says it's like 20% using your learned skills and 80% using common sense and stamina. He says just about anyone can do it so long as they're physically capable and not jackasses who want to cut corners.

My point to that is, carpenters are not typically the most corporate-run interview-required type people. He 'hires' workers based on his current workers vouching for them, or mostly when people just approach him looking for work. If you ever see some dudes outside doing construction (focus more on looking for guys doing residential shit, not public buildings sense they usually hire big construction firms), just go up and ask them if they need some helpers or something. You don't need to be trained in any way as long as you're strong and can work hard. It's a good way to get your foot in the door to start working in that sort of business. It's all about who you know.

Winter times are painfully slow for him, that cuts out just about all exterior work which can account for over half of his work, and people generally just don't want construction done in the winter time. He's now taken to flipping shit on Craigslist for a profit (cars, rims, electronics, etc). This has proven to be really successful for him. Recommend it to anyone who has the motivation for it.

[Anonymous No.463640]

>>463534

There's a tyre business where I live that sell used tyres. In Germany apparently they have a minimum tread depth of 3.0mm, but in the UK it's only 1.6mm. The guy who owns the business goes over to Germany, buys a load of tyres dirt cheap because they would only be recycled/disposed of, brings them back to the UK and sells them.

[Anonymous No.464481]

>>463576
>Gettin trolled
wut

[oil services No.464498]

>>461776
oil services are good
>go out to the middle of the desert in a truck

[Anonymous No.464523]

This topic interests me.
I have a highly specialised skill (musician, dont laugh)

i thinking of starting a music school, provide instrument lessons, piano/guitar to begin with, songwriting/composing and recording/production.

I have all the gear, Im concert level pianist and pretty good guitarist, I have contacts should i require teachers for other instruments, i also have a large number of clients who currently take lessons from me and I am friends with principals of several school so I can get advertising there so I just need a property to operate from.

i currently make 30-40 euro an hour, If I do group classes i could probably make 60-80.

Any ideas for how i could make my proposed usic school even better? im thinking concerts every term would also raise the profile of the school

[Anonymous No.464544]

>>461776
what country are you in?

[Anonymous No.464545]

>>461776
or, if you prefer, and I do, which country are you in?

[Anonymous No.464734]

>>464523
30-40 € / hour for a particular class? Who are you Beethoven?

[Anonymous No.464785]

>>464523
Lease a place in a rich part of town.
Get private school kids as students.
Grow a small beard, wear outdated as fuck suits, and watch the rich kids being dragged into your school by their parents.

[Anonymous No.464895]

>>464523
My suggestion is to add instrument-building of some type or all types to your curriculum. From simple strings/guitar/banjo tech to amplifier building

[Anonymous No.464937]

>>463519
>Granted, it wasn't entirely 'legit'.
That's the understatement of the freakin' decade.