Just in time for the holidays is another idea fresh off the presses. It’s July — a full 5 months before the Christmas season, and you have adequate time to prepare for this hustle by getting some ideas in your head and preparing now. Don’t say I didn’t tell you!

Now, a good hustle that has grown in popularity over the past couple of years is holiday decorating. There are plenty of homeowners and business owners who just don’t have the time, the inclination or the design know-how to decorate their homes and businesses for the holiday season. This is especially true for the winter season, but it is possible that you could expand this business into a four-season enterprise (big birthday parties, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, etc). The opportunities are almost endless, and how far you go depends on your imagination and also what is popular in your area of the world.

Here’s how it works: you’ll be using holiday lights, signs, banners, figurines, displays, and anything else that has a seasonal theme. Starting out, you can get contracts with home owners or businesses and decide if you will purchase the lights or use the ones that they have, if applicable (purchasing the decorations yourself gives you an opportunity to mark up the price for an additional profit). If you know nothing about this sort of thing, you can look for more information online or in decorating books in bookstores. I listed that second because it’s not terribly important to “know” how to hang lights and install displays right now, but you have time to find out beforehand. Over time you can take pictures of your work to make a portfolio, and that will make new customers more at ease in the future. However, if you’ve never done this before, simply being honest and getting a couple of “test” customers can start you on your way.

Just don’t promise to to make their house look like Rockefeller Plaza this early in the game!

Eventually you can hire people and show them the correct way to install everything, which frees your time to get more clients. Speaking of clients, they can be found anywhere disposable income is in abundance, i.e. the affluent parts of town. Put up simple flyers in grocery stores and libraries, and use resources like Craigslist to cut down on using up your gas to drive around town if need be. Once you do a good job and get a few repeat customers, the word will spread automatically and your advertising budget will be cut as a result. This hustle really isn’t that hard, because most of us have hung lights on a Christmas tree before — so this is just an expanded version that may include ladders and real trees still attached to the ground.

Hold off on the big promises until you get a good team. And tall ladders.