Is your income from your day job not enough? Or you want to just explore other opportunities while you still hold a full time job? Here are some ideas for you.
HOME SERVICE SPA
What is it: This convenient and personalized service means clients need not leave the comforts of their home to get pampered. Even entire families can enjoy spa and salon treatments at home whenever and wherever. Offer anything from foot spas to haircuts.
What you may be up against: People may feel uncomfortable about letting strangers — your masseuses — into their own homes.
Things to consider: Training, shuttle service, equipment, uniforms, maybe portable cassette players (to add ambiance), and mobile phones for your staff. Safety of your girls, should clients make advances on them.
How you can be different from others:
- Expand your services. Look into other services you can offer like providing healthy meals, body products, and even exercise and diet programs.
- Consider hiring masseurs, as some individuals prefer a man’s heavier touch.
- Invest in training. Travel to spa destinations like Thailand, or get a spa consultant to teach you in massage techniques.
- Develop special occasion packages. Spread the word and offer your services to include group rates for special occasions like birthdays, bridal showers, pre-wedding treats, or reunions. These offer higher potential income both through numbers and the networks you can establish.
- Distribute flyers. Penetrate offices, subdivisions, and schools in your area of service.
BAG-MAKING
What is it: Feeding the female addiction for bags, bags, and more bags.
What you may be up against: Creativity stagnation, and the overwhelming competition.
What to consider: Investment in equipment (sewing machines), space (should you hire people to make your products), and new material (fabric, pattern, construction, metal work and accessories). When you’re ready, why not export?
How you can be different from the others:
- Prepare capital investment to pour into machinery for mass-production. It could be a hi-speed sewing machine for fabric or an imported unit for leather bag material.
- Innovate or specialize in designs. You can diversify into other products like diaries, planners, card cases, and other holding paraphernalia.
- Showcase your products via local and international trade fairs. You get to sell, and to check out the competition as well. You may find some critical detail or manufacturing strategy that will make your business more profitable.
SALAD DRESSING
What is it: riding on the incessant trend of going back to basics and eating healthy, and exploring your own creative culinary skills.
What you’re up against: sub-standard ingredients, food poisoning
What to consider: food safety, especially since salad dressings have one of the shortest shelf lives among previously prepared and pre-packed food items.
How you can be different from the others:
- Address product promotion and distribution. Open a small place in the business district strictly for delivery operations or orders-to-go. This way, you keep the overhead to a minimum while getting a more realistic feel of the market.
- Include in your label clear and proper serving and storage instructions as well as the ingredients used to avoid food-related problems.
- Tap your friends and relatives for contacts or referrals to canteens and other dining establishments where you can offer your salad dressing. There’s always a market for customized products.
- Diversify by tying up with bazaar sellers of organic produce and other salad staples or direct-market your product to major food establishments like restaurants and food concessionaires.
- Look for recipes that may be tried and tested by something you’re sure you can improve on to better suit popular taste. Keep with the traditional if you have not gotten modest success yet with your innovations. Later on, as taste buds evolve some more, indulge your gourmet tendencies and come up with your own original, never-before tasted salad dressing concoctions.
- Use snazzy labels and bottles and offer your products to supermarkets. Be upbeat and don’t get discouraged if you receive small orders in the beginning. Continue to upgrade.
More on:
Hot Extra Income Ideas for Working Moms (Part 2)
Hot Extra Income Ideas for Working Moms (Part 3)
I also have links to my other articles through my blogs: Sharing my Thoughts and Lifestyle Magazine for Moms
Want to know how to earn extra dollars through writing articles like this? Just visit: http://www.jejeizahfaye.com/2010/01/earning-through-writing-articles.html
Fri, Feb 19, 2010, by Jejeizahfaye
Money Making