10th Hustle: Cash Flow With Christmas Decorations

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.

9th Hustle: 9 Ways You Can Completely Expose Yourself

After you buy the domain, find the hosting, and generate content, the worst is NOT over. You still need to get people to your site, and keep them coming back.

What’s a website administrator to do?

Well, short of advertising on television, radio, newspaper, or billboards, it seems as if nothing else will get the exposure you need to tell the world of your existence. Now is the time to become creative, and make some of your habits profitable. Prospering online is a lot like networking offline — you have to go to meetings (other sites), you have to introduce yourself (make a post), and you have to be friendly (don’t get banned). Most importantly, you want to make an positive impact and be remembered so that people will begin to look for you and miss your presence when you are gone.

Exposure gone wrong.

Forums, blogs, and any other public gathering spots on the web will be our virtual playgrounds, and maximizing this network will be essential to your online success. Here are a couple of tips for making the most out of your web visits, and getting yourself (and your site) known:

Use your name: Make this consistent on ALL of the sites that you visit. The goal here is to be remembered, and you can’t do that if you have a different login for different sites. Also, on forums and blogs, they usually have ways that you can comment and leave your website address, so your name will eventually be linked with your site and generate more traffic.

Use your signature…: Again, it’s a good idea to be consistent with this as well. If you can, make a small graphic that people can easily recognize, and tie it to your URL (see the bottom of this post for an idea). Place this on ALL of your posts so people will get used to seeing it.

…Or reject your signature: Here’s a good strategy for NOT using your signature. Signatures are great; however, they only appear when YOU post. Wouldn’t it be cool to have other people do the work for you? Well if you turn off or disable your signature, and instead post the same information at the bottom of all of your posts, not only will it appear when you post, but also when people quote your post in a reply! This trick is best when you use a small graphic, because people can ignore text but pictures are a little harder to overlook. You can also vary the placement of your signature information, sometimes posting it at the top or in the middle of your content.

Give honest commentary: Making frivolous comments will get your comments tossed — or worse. On most sites, you don’t have to explicitly place your website in with your comments, just use the fields just above the commenting area to enter your name, e-mail address and website link. I usually drop by a site and leave a positive note, such as “Good Job! This information is VERY valuable and xyz is the reason why pigs cannot fly” or a variation of that to make nice with the owner. Also, try to include specifics in your comment, and ask good questions to encourage ongoing dialogue. Some sites even highlight the top commentators, so make note of these sites and comment often.

Check your sites twice: Santa has his list, and so should you. Make a habit of visiting your favorite blogs daily, and if possible, twice a day. You never know when new content will be posted, and being the first to comment shows that you aren’t just a fly-by-night visitor. I usually check once in the morning and once at night, and it doesn’t take more than 15-20 minutes each time.

Site variations are useful: Variety is the spice of life, and it could spice up your traffic. Tap into what you like — you might go fishing regularly, but also enjoy bowling, archery, painting and reading. When you regularly visit and participate on sites with different content, you have the opportunity to reach many different people, instead of the same old regulars. Don’t force it though — you want to be able to add to the discussion and not appear as if you’re just fishing for new visitors.

Try something new: Be on the lookout for new websites that appear. Being the first to comment establishes a relationship with that owner, and the two of you can help each other in the building process. Even if you have a mid-to-large site, you never know what you might StumbleUpon.

Be nosy: Running out of ideas on how to find more sites to visit? As you frequent different sites, click on various names to get more information on any user and see what kind of site they have. This is a great way to ‘add a site a day’ to your routine. Done once per day, that’s 30 more sites per month, and 60 if you add 2 a day. In half a year you could reach upwards of 360 sites that you can gain exposure from, and that number can exponentially rise depending on that particular website’s traffic.

Be nosier: Want a really easy way to find the websites that you can link to? Use Technorati. Browse another blog’s Techorati reactions and you’ll have a whole day’s worth of linking right in front of you. Some bloggers have thousands of listings, and they are yours for the taking

It takes work, but those automatic payments into your account will be well worth it!

8th Hustle: The Resurrection & Return of WebVan

For the people who enjoyed the service, it was a dream come true. For investors, it was the perfect business. Although WebVan isn’t in business anymore, you could very well take up where they left off.

After the dot com bust, people went back to the regular way of doing things. Moms clip out coupons once again (as everyone should, in my opinion), go get the groceries themselves, and prepare meals for the family the old fashioned way. However, in recent years, there has been an explosion in the number of millionaires not only across the country, but across the world. More millionaires means more dispoable income. And more disposable income means more opportunity for you!

If you live in a large metropolitan area, you could be your very own WebVan. Home delivery is predicted to be one of the hottest business opportunities of the decade and beyond. Because people today are lazy and pressed for time, this is the perfect business model. Also, the population is getting older and more consumers want stuff delivered right to their doorstep. It has been said many times that the service sector is the biggest sector for growth in the U.S., simply because of the combination of time constraints, laziness and the need for personal service. People increasingly feel that no one cares about them, that they are just a number, and that businesses only want money. This is your chance to dispel this myth by giving your customers the personal attention they desire, and making some cash alsong the way.

This is another example of something that doesn’t take much to start. Of course, you will need a car (or you can be like Peter Parker and ride a moped. Heck, it saves on gas!), some customers and something to deliver. The best way to go about this is to contact local businesses and see if you can function as their exclusive delivery service. If you could get businesses in brand new developments before they even open, that would be excellent because you can watch the growth from the ground up. Items to deliver could include prescriptions, grocery goods, hardware, lumberyard, etc. Do a good job for one or two businesses, and the word will spread. Then, find other drivers and have them working under you. Make them a 1099 contractor to save on expenditures and liabilities, and have their wages paid either per delivery or per hour, with the funding coming out of the contracts you sign with the businesses.

The country is experiencing explosive growth, and this could be the ticket for you in this new millennium.

If it’s good enough for a super hero, it’s good enough for you!