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Summer businesses. - bigsharn - 07-05-2011
Well again I've had my thinking cap on, this time thinking about how to make a bit of money from the recent good weather (and hopefully, the good weather to come). So here's my research condensed into one easy article.
...Just bear in mind that you'll need public liability insurance when opening a business of ANY description. You also have to factor advertising costs into everything.
Ice cream/refreshments
Don't do it. The ads will say "easy money, will make it back within a week" but you have to ask yourself where you're getting your stock from. There's also the small issue in most towns that you can't just open a stall in a random place, you need to contact the council, sort out an area that you can sell from and in some cases (York being one of them) you actually need to get hold of a trader's license before any money changes hands at all.
If your involves food at all then it gets even worse, as you have to pass the health and hygeine certificates associated with handling food.
Just, don't bother
Tours or Couriering
Now, as much as I liked this idea (yes, I looked into it extensively) it depends on the mode of transport you use to conduct the tours. In the UK and USA you may need a higher class driving license and will probably need your CPC/CDL, respectively. There's a road train in York which can be driven on a car license w/ trailer entitlement, and a few others very similar up for sale that would be worth looking at
Other forms of transport you could conduct a tour on include:
A boat, which means no extra licenses needed but there's a lot of legislation as regards to safety and security (and they're hugely expensive).
A bicycle/pedicab (Yes, this is the one I looked at, and you can carry up to 8 people without needing a CPC.), the only disadvantage being the weight you'd have to pull, meaning you'd need to be pretty damn fit to run this daily. Depending on how you work it, you may also need a couple of trailers in a train and some speciality gearing or an electric assist motor. Alternatively you could give people handsfree radios, so they do their own pedalling and have a group of however many you want to, but the market wouldn't be particularly huge.
The advantages to this would be that not only can you sell tickets for scheduled tours (as long as you don't do it while stood on the street, you wouldn't need a trader's license), but you can also advertise your vehicle to be hired privately. The downside being the extra licenses needed for some of the modes of transport.
(I've written the above about touring mainly as it's my expertise, but a lot of it DOES apply to couriering, if that's even a word)
Anything involving equipment.
Landscaping, gardening, DIY, cleaning, on-call computer repair. Easy money if you know how. The problem being that everyone else has had the same idea at some point, or is already doing it in your area, so you will have to get yourself known out there. The question isn't whether you can do it or not, the question is whether you can do it better or cheaper than everyone else that does it.
You will need to do a hell of a lot more research in this for your particular area. Maybe there are a couple of ideas I've missed, so feel free to share
RE: Summer businesses. - Mark - 07-05-2011
When a SHARN article starts with "Well again I've had my thinking cap on", I just had to read all of it. :tongue
RE: Summer businesses. - Drumm - 08-05-2011
You could always sell chocolate for money..
RE: Summer businesses. - Mr. President - 12-05-2011
women pay big $$$$ to you know...give them pleasure! What can i say i like to eat out!
Edit: Only hotties though!