Make Money While Making Dinner
Plotting the week’s dinner menu can often be a seriously difficult chore – after all, dishes like meatloaf, spaghetti, and burgers can get very dull. If you enjoy cooking, then you have just stumbled upon a viable business that will allow you to do what you love and make money doing it – offer personal in-home cooking lessons.
The problem is many people have hectic lives and simply don’t have time to experiment with new dishes; most would rather cook a meal they know is going to be a success, throw something in the microwave, or just go through the drive-thru at a fast food joint on the way home from work. Now you can steal some of the business from those multi-billion dollar fast food restaurant chains.
The premise is simple. Clients will hire you to come to their homes to teach them how to cook. You can charge between $250 and $350 a week for five nightly lessons. You will bring all the ingredients; all the client has to supply is herself/himself, the kitchen, and a strong dose of enthusiasm.
The great thing about in-home cooking lessons is you can be as creative as you want. Maybe you will offer lessons for busy people on how to cook quick yet delicious meals. You might create a list of dishes, and your clients can choose which they would like to learn to cook. Or, you might decide to offer “family” cooking lessons where the whole family can gather around in the kitchen and learn how to make wonderful new dishes.
Purchase your ingredients from your local grocery store. Sign up for the local “price plus” card that most grocery stores offer. Having such a card will give you savings on certain items, and always check the Sunday paper for valuable coupons.
Marketing your personal in-home cooking lessons should be simple. Most towns have free papers, like the Pennysaver, in which you can place an ad. You can also advertise in your local weekly newspaper. You might also want to post signs, with tear-off strips that include your name and phone number, on all the bulletin boards at your local grocery stores.
One of the best ways to get free advertising for your new business is to contact your local newspaper. Tell them you are a hometown entrepreneur. Perhaps they will be interested enough to write a feature on you for their next issue. Many towns and states also have business publications that list all the newest businesses and also feature articles on entrepreneurs. If there is such a publication in your area, contact the editor. Having articles written on your business is a surefire way to get excellent, free publicity.
Everyone needs to eat, and most people love good food. By offering in-home personal cooking lessons, you are going to attract plenty of people who are eager to spice up dinnertime. Instead of simply offering “cooking lessons,” you might want to consider specializing in ethnic foods like Chinese, Indian, or Thai food. Emphasize how unique and impressive your clients’ meals will be since most people go out for such cuisine. Start a website that features articles about Chinese cuisine, for example, and show your clients how learning to cook ethnic dishes will make dinner parties more impressive and turn dinnertime into something everyone looks forward to daily.
Resources:
http://www.businesstown.com/gettingstarted/index.asp
http://www.recipesource.com/
http://www.cooksrecipes.com/category/international.html
Read MoreFisherman Matching Service
Let’s face it, you can put this together much like a dating service or a carpooling service. You will offer to match up people that have fishing in common, that for many different reasons are looking for others that enjoy the same hobby and don’t want to do it alone.
First, when someone signs up for a membership to use your type of service it will be very important to find out why he or she has signed up. Therefore, you will need to put together a well-planned questionnaire. Remember, the more questions that you ask the better, since there are various reasons for people signing up with your service. Make sure you find out if they have a preference, or requirement, when it comes to the gender of their partners. What do they want to fish for, where are they planning to fish, do they have a boat, do they prefer fishing from a bank as opposed to a boat, how big a group would they like to fish with? Do they like to fish with people that talk, drink, or smoke? When do they like to get started on their fishing trips, how long to they plan to spend fishing? As you can see, there are tons of questions.
Since this could turn out as an excellent service to start up on the Internet, you could offer to serve as large an area as you feel comfortable with offering. You could offer to match up someone that lives in New York and would like to plan a fishing trip in Montana. On the other hand, you have the option to stay small and just offer local area people the opportunity to find others that live in the same general area to fish with one day a week; this all depends on what you would like to take on.
Offering a service like this will be an adventure, get the word out that you have a great service to offer those people that love fishing. You might want to post your services at bait and tackle shops and sporting good stores. Any companies that sell fishing supplies should be target companies to try to work with. You might even contact the companies that manufacture fishing equipment. See if you can get them to offer free memberships to their customers if they buy their merchandise or spend so much money on their particular merchandise. This is a great idea to see if you can get sporting good stores to offer occasionally when they are trying to get their customers to spend a little more money on fishing supplies or just anything in the store. You should be able to offer these memberships at a discount price to these large companies if they can provide you a certain amount of customers.
You should be able to charge your members $10, or more, per month to belong to your fishing companion matching service.
Remember; always keep your service up-to-date with new information constantly. Maintain it on a regular basis and encourage your customers to keep in contact with you whether positive or negative, you want to keep in touch with them. Their feedback can be the best resource for making changes when needed. Be customer friendly and let them know that you appreciate their input.
Offer your members a blog that they can all use, this could be a great way for them to pass on helpful hints, or for those more experienced to help new ones that are just starting out in this fun sport.
Your site would also be able to bring you in more money by offering advertising of various products that your members would be interested in as anglers. This could be an excellent ‘business idea’ to give a try!
Resources:
http://www.superscripts.com/
http://www.mojoscripts.com/
http://www.membershipclientpro.com/
Read MoreParent’s Making Cash: Product Inventions
Parents have a unique chance to create product ideas every day. The little minds of children are imaginative, creative and wide open to the possibilities of what could be. Parents only have to listen and take action. Sometimes a great product idea comes from parenthood itself. Products can always be better and more convenient. Here are three parents who took action on the opportunity to create a product that’s in demand.
Julia Beck Bromberg discovered a problem when she was eight and a half months pregnant. While taking a childbirth education class she was being instructed to find different things to help her through the labor. “I kept thinking, this is a joke…they expect me, at 8 1/2 months pregnant to run around town finding this stuff,” she recalls. Julia thought it would so much more convenient to have all of these things in one place, and to have the products focused on the mother and her experience. She took action by going to her OB with the idea, and they partnered up to begin Forty Weeks. Forty Weeks sells two great product kits, one for labor and one for mothers. Celebrities including Kelly Preston, Melina Kanaredes, Marlee Matlin, Calista Flockhart and more have even used Forty Weeks. In addition, Cindy Crawford named it as one of her favorite baby shower gifts!
Robert Klick was bouncing his two year old daughter on his knee when he thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was an actual pony for her to ride on? That’s when the idea for the Po-Knee began. The Po-Knee is a stuffed pony that straps onto your leg so your little ones can ride a pony when you’re bouncing them. Robert Klick decided to enter Oprah Winfrey’s “Million Dollar Idea Challenge”. Hundreds of inventors across the country entered Oprah’s contest judged by QVC President of U.S. Commerce Darlene Daggett and QVC Program Host Jayne Brown. Seven finalists appeared on the Oprah show to, well, show off their products. The studio audience voted on the best invention-the Po-Knee! The Po-Knee is now sold at their website and through QVC.
Beth Butler left her eight-month-old daughter home to be cared for by a Hispanic woman while she went to work. Within six months, she discovered that her daughter could clearly understand both spoken English and Spanish. Beth’s fluent in Spanish, but it never occurred that her daughter would be able to learn so quickly. Boca Beth was born with videos, flash cards, puppets and magnetic wall cards to help little ones learn Spanish, or English. Boca Beth also sells a bilingual CD to make learning even more fun!
These parents aren’t much different than any other. The only thing that separates them from others is that they recognized a great product opportunity and took action. Now they have successful businesses, all from one idea that molded the great products they sell today.
Helpful Links:
http://www.fortyweeks.com/
http://www.poknee.com/
http://bocabeth.com/categories.asp
Read MoreTurn Your Hobby Into Extra Income
