
Ask HN: What are some low / no cost businesses one could start part time? - jamesmp98
To spare you the details, I&#x27;ve found myself in a bit of financial trouble and while I have plans to fix it, I could speed up the process by utilizing the boatloads of free time I have particularly on weekends to make some spare cash.<p>Are there any sort of no cost businesses or services I could provide that I could perform on these weekends? I used to do web development for small businesses, but that&#x27;s a pretty non-existent market these days. Also I don&#x27;t &#x2F; can&#x27;t drive so that eliminates a number of options.  I don&#x27;t need to make much, even just $50-$100 a week would be helpful
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pryelluw
I convinced the teenager who mows my lawn to start spraying for bugs as a side
gig to his lawn mowing gig. He now makes more money doing that than mowing
lawns. Cost to start: $15. Makes $25 per visit. Takes about 30 minutes or less
to spray the exterior of a house with off the shelf stuff. He is fully booked
for the summer and does 4 clients a day (because he does not drive and uses a
bicycle).

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saluki
If you've done web development for small businesses I would give that a go.
Start with family and friends who might need a website or know someone who
needs one. Focus on basic websites till you get your feet wet again.

Then start doing more and more advanced sites.

Try offering a website as a service package where a small business pays you
$99/mo (Up to X pages) for design, development, hosting and maintenance and
small updates. You can give a quote for large edits/updates. Ass you add more
pages to their site increase their monthly subscription (you can set this up
through paypal at first or ask for an annual check, or set it up through
stripe, stripe has invoices now which is a nice way to do it.)

Or offer them a traditional quote($500-$750 for a really basic site in my area
if you're working with individuals or freelancers), plus a monthly or annual
hosting and maintenance fee ($20+/mo).

There are still plenty of small businesses that need websites or need new
websites. Start with family and friends, then start inquiring about talking to
other businesses who you can see need a website or a refresh.

SSL certs are a bigger deal now, since the browsers will list sites as not
secure. If you sign up for forge.laravel.com you can spin up servers on
Digital Ocean and setup SSL certs from LetsEncrypt. Forge is $20/mo, Digital
Ocean droplets start at $5/mo, but the certs you can setup for free and forge
will automatically renew them. So you can provide SSL certs as part of your
hosting, maintenance packages.

Good luck.

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quickthrower2
I signed up for a market research company's mailing list, and I get about 2
offers a week, $100 AUD cash usually. I've said no so far because I'm fussy,
but if I needed the cash these would be excellent. They are often out of work
hours too.

Other than that, sell your stuff on Gumtree/eBay/Craigslist. Do some good
sales pitch to maximize what you get.

Can you do handy work? Always demand for that. Depends on licenses, insurance
etc. I guess though.

Can you take a lodger?

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mod
You could easily do this buying things locally and selling them on eBay. I do
this some and find it quite fun. I do not like listing the items on eBay, that
is the necessary evil of it all.

It took me about 3 weeks and a very minimal investment ($40?) before I turned
a profit.

I primarily buy things at goodwill outlet, other thrift shops, and yard sales.

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JamesBarney
Going to a local bar and cooking burgers or steaks on the weekend.

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duxup
Some coding camps offer online tutoring. The tutors can work from anywhere and
get paid well.

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sethammons
Walk door to door and sell life insurance?

