Self employment thread.

why do you need cnc if you're making *custom* guns... bad machinist?

 

I wouldn't recommend it either, you probably don't need it if you can do some math and you have lots of basic life skills.
I hardly did high school and I am on my second business in my life time. The first a success and this one now keeping me quite comfortable so far. This one will buy me into an early retirement if I don't fuck it up.
Well I did actually go through high school, in the front door and right out the back door,,, mind you I have never worked for min wage in my life either sept to have a job for a couple weeks between jobs I wanted and did get.
You don't have to pick something you don't know about but I did twice and it's been quite an experience. You should pick something of great interest to you tho.

 

That is true a thrift shop in town even gives you the suggested msrp and then what your actually paying. Saw a 3000 dollar craps table for 700. Could easily flip it or hey...it'd make one hell of a coffee table

 

I've thought about selling "designer" handbags and shit like that on the net .. some other people are doing it but you have to list it in just the right way or else break the terms of service, and risk getting bad feedback.

Item sold 'as is', may be missing original box and tags, etc .. couldn't ask the full retail price but you could still mark it up quite a bit from the street price and make a profit.

 

Back in February I decided that I'd had enough of working for other people and decided to go self employed. I advertised my services as a house cleaner/pet sitter. I started with literally nothing! Just an accounts book and a Facebook page. 5 months on I have 5 regular clients and I'm working pretty much everyday.

 

I wouldn't consider starting a business as a good way to do that. If you want any customers, you have to stay connected to society. You may find yourself more deeply immersed than ever, in some ways.

I definitely use a lot of stuff I learned in class, including accounting, business math, business law, marketing, microeconomics, and public speaking.

I still find it unbelievable how many small business owners haven't yet mastered all the concepts from the 101 level introductory business practices classes. I often see a "build it and they will come" mentality, which is the total opposite of carefully studying your potential market before offering a product or service. I don't know how they get business loans. My bank made me write up a formal business plan. I guess the amount of money was an important factor.

 

try self-retirement. Just find a way to get on SSI. Every one can qualify as ill in today's world.

 

I sell books on ebay. I don't make much mony, I can usually buy a gallon of milk about twice a week, that is if I don't need gas to get it.
A place called Teespring you can design tee shirts and they will help you sell them, Here ias one I designed. Haven't sold any yet. Let me know what you think. http://teespring.com/rbowenjbr

 

I dunno man. I'm desperate for a job right now. My account is already in the red, and I'm 28 days from pay day.

 

I started contracting out graphic design services as a multi-disciplinary designer. I found it was far too broad. So if I might make a suggestion, limit yourself to a certain area of service and focus on that. I really like the suggestion about the cleaning service marketed towards homosexuals. Funny, but I do think it is a marketable service.

Looking forward, I will probably get back into the design services. I have thought more thoroughly this time and know I will focus on Logo/Brand identity design.

 

Don't stop at one income source. If you wanted to slave away to make just one job pay meet all your needs you'd get a 9-5, right? So don't. The more types of income you have the less stressful (even if you lose one job, you have others), more free and overall better off you will be.

First of all, get a truck or a cargo van. It's almost an essential if you don't want a 9-5 job.

Work a couple days at a regular job, like delivering pizzas or mc donalds, whatever, for taxes.

Then take your truck and make money with it. Post offers to haul things on craigslist, do scrapping, go to uship.com an dother sites like it and bid on hauling gigs.

Find anything renewable you can make/sell and sell it:

If you have your own property, grow food on it and sell everything extra at the flea market on weekends.

if you have a large property, build a simple barn and offer horse owners grazing time. If you have a barn or a garage, find a mechanic friend and let him fix vehicles out of your garage.

If you have any skills, sell them online. Advertise yourself as a handyman or whatever you can do, job by job based on your wants not someone's timeclock.

Buy chickens and rent out chickens to people(google rent a chicken if you think I'm joking). Sell eggs. Sell chickens or other small livestock such as goats.

Start a fish or shrimp farm.

Put solar panels on your property and sell power back to the city/county you live in.

There are a million DIY How-To videos on youtube. A "job" is literally anything that you do that is income, so if you're creative you can have as many or as few jobs as you need/want.
Just find something that you would enjoy, or at least not mind, doing and learn how to monetize it.

 

I was self employed for close to two years and in the end it just wasn't working. I had to contract myself out so although I was "self employed" I was really only my own staff, not my own boss, I was still contractually obligated complete my service agreements.

My company was earning a decent amount but the amount I could only pay myself was very little, basically almost 20k drop from previous job. They'd taken advantage of my naivety, work ethic and enthusiasm I showed for the job. I started to work out only a few months in that it was happening but after forking out the money to start the business and buy a van etc. (courier job) I thought I'd hold on and hopefully pull ahead.

I was offered this new beaut role which was pretty good I admit but it soon turned into a 11-13 hour day for which I was not paid for 4hrs and expected to be awake ready to go at roughly 3am for no pay.

Eventually I tucked my tail between my legs and got the fuck out of it, landed a warehouse job for 15k more and only 8hrs a day.

Although it was professionally and in terms of career wise the worst mistake of my life I did grow up personally and it taught me a lot of lessons very quickly. I went from a straight arrow nice guy etc. to an absolute fucking **** and a jerk and now I'm not afraid to stand up for myself etc. that's the positive that came from it.

 

Affilate programs can be done by people without any skills

You bascially can set up websites linking amazon products and get a small cut

 

Clean foods demand is rising and sources diminishing atm...
About anything sellable you grow is growing

 

When i was young ( 25) my then wife & I where in a consignment shop that sold children's clothes. The women was unhappy in this business & we bought it for $3000.00 / Now, she owned no merchandise ( consignment) so we bought the name & lease. I stuck my mother-in-law in there because she was a pain in the ass & made about $12,000.00 a year. This was in 1984. We clothed our kids for free.

 

Advertising as a clean-up business seems to work. ( don't do it) Cleaning overgrown yards, garages, hauling junk off peoples property. people get rid of decent things sometimes, which can be sold or kept.

 

Freelance Artist:
Will need the art supplies to create (I chose tablet for digital art. Buy it once and lasts a long time for your business.)
Internet bill to reach online clients
Email address/or Social media to contact clients
Computer/or Laptop

An occasional sketch book and that is all I need to run my Commission Business. )

 

Indie Game Dev here, been running for 2 years maybe, made next to nothing so far but everything is in front of me

 

There are tax traps in the US tax code that dramatically affect self-employed people. My taxes jumped from 17% to 39% one year and it took many months to pay off the penalties for submitting lean quarterly tax submissions. If you rise fast, they slap you down.