Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL and BCG600SIL Grinders.
The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use iFixit[2],[3] to drive the traffic. It passively makes enough to cover my own coffee needs forever. I spend about 20 minutes per month fielding questions. This all happened because my grinder failed and I could not get parts.
I use a super cheap hand grinder I bought off amazon (the stainless steel one that there are 100 different variations of on amazon). There is a plastic part that breaks after about 6 months of usage. Someone modeled and uploaded a replacement piece to Thingiverse. The grinder is cheap enough that it is disposable, but since it is so easy to print a replacement piece with my $179 3D printer, I haven’t needed to throw it away. I hope that at some point 3D printing becomes more accessible and affordable, and with more materials, that more and more products are repaired instead of replaced.
Another random datapoint. I have been using a Monoprice MP Select Mini V2 [1] for a couple years (similar price point) and am extremely pleased. After leveling the bed the first time I've done no maintenance and it seems to print when asked with no trouble. I typically use it not at all for a few months, then up to multiple times a day when working on something.
I've helped a friend with this one (I have a MP Select V2 full size), and I can tell you the thing is a workhorse. Pretty sure he has it running 5 days a week with 5-7 hour prints per day. He keeps the moving parts lubricated but that's about it. Just set him up with Octoprint to make the loading and monitoring easier.
I recently ordered a part for my daughters dresser drawer - the Kenlin Rite-TrackII, and paid $12 for four including shipping. 6 to 7 years ago I paid $68 for a single part. To my surprise when I opened my recent plastic mailer envelope, I discovered it was a 3D printed piece. Any idea how one can 3d scan a part for exact copy?
The field of photogrammetry deals with taking multiple photos of something to create a 3d model. There is free software for consumers that can do this. But there are a lot of limitations and currently the traditional way of making a CAD model more or less by hand is almost always faster/cheaper and more accurate.
They make full on 3d scanners but most parts do not need "3d scanning" so much as they need a few minutes in the hand of someone with a caliper and a sketch pad.
There are a few services including Autodesk ReCap which you can give a number of high quality photos and a 3D model will be produced which you can then scale appropriately in your CAD software
I know a guy who runs a multi-million dollar business making replacement parts for a particular type of business machine that you find in a lot of places. There are only a few OEMs and they all stopped making a similar (critical) component for their older models.
He was originally in the business of repairing these machines and then discovered he could no longer buy these parts from the OEMs so he learned CAD and CNC and injection molding and started making them a few years ago. He has a 3D printer for prototyping, but he needs to injection mold part of the final product because there is no filament in the particular material that he needs. His business has transitioned from repair to manufacturing and now he mostly sells replacement parts to other repair shops.
I don't want to disturb his business by talking about it in detail, but the point is that I think there are and will be many opportunities around repair parts that manufacturers are unwilling to provide because they'd rather be selling new machines. Aside from the environmental impact, that's fine since there are many people who won't go the repair route, and then there's a secondary market for those who will make parts and repair the machines.
I used to know tool and die makers that did that back in the day. Sadly, a lot of manufacturing was sent off to China. I assume there are Chinese people doing similar things.
I'm willing to bet the quality of a lot of these is shite, though. Plus people in the US would most likely want to buy from a seller in the US (faster shipping + implied better quality).
There is a solution to so many problems here (creating usually unavailable parts for machines/devices/products) but the problem is knowing which parts are in demand and currently have no supplier.
A maker would need to have an interest or hobby in such a device & discover a need for the item for it to come into fruition. But just think of how many general 3D printed parts could be printed as solutions for so many products out there that are going unmade.
I would like to if time permits. There is a huge untapped market here. The difficulty is in locating the parts that are both unavailable and 3D printable. I keep it in the back of my head as I repair other items. So much expensive stuff ends up in a landfill over a tiny part.
I could see someday having a github project for replacement parts, each one iterating and getting better an better -- far beyond the original.
I do this for old (15yrs+, not old-old) JDM cars. There's a massive untapped potential in this for any car-nuts who have 3D printers.
Just take a quick look through your favourite forum for your car of choice and there's endless threads begging for some random old plastic part that can no longer be found.
Interior trim clips, centre console fascias, exterior body plugs (where tow hook goes, where roof racks go, etc), stereo surrounds, door handle surrounds, etc etc etc.
This. A friend buys and restores old Porsche 911s. He will pay anything for custom made parts that are rare as hens teeth. As an example there is a housing around the main cooling fan that seems to be titanium or aluminum or something very exotic. [1]
A company does sell a replacement, which he paid a fortune for, which had garbage tolerances and we spent weeks modifying it until it fit more or less well enough.
I suspect if you spent time on "classic car" forums you'd find owners of very specific models of cars searching for things you could make and sell for any markup, and every owner would buy one.
I am into older Maserati's. Own a couple of them. I do a lot of manufacturing myself. 3d printing, cncing. The problem is that whenever I design a replacement panel, wishbones or various other stuff and try to sell them commercialy I will get sued by the original Maserati company. On a low scale it's fine, but you will never get a living out of it. The only parts which are in a gray area are rims, exhausts, filters, springs and couple of other parts.
Similarly, a German-based company started producing replica Mercedes 300 SL bodies but they were shutdown and the bodies had to be crushed. Although, this isn't quite the same, because the bodies weren't used as replacement parts to keep existing cars on the road.
What do they sue you for? If you are upfront about what you are selling, and you didn't steal any IP, it isn't fraud or theft of trade secrets. Maybe they have patents, and claim you are violating them? I can't see how it is illegal to reverse engineer a part and sell a similar version.
If we had a right to repair law, presumably it would allow third parties to make replacements when the original manufacturer lo linger was.
Even without that, I'm kind of surprised they sue. Are they patenting each part? Is there case law that covers this? Or is it just a case of bringing a suit to scare people I sto stopping? I wonder.
I would actually like to hear a little more about why the tolerances were poor. Were the major diameters the issue here? I could see a lot of adjustment happening on a car-to-car basis to get concentricity between the alternator fan and the shroud just right. I have very little experience with Porsches, but am a coordinate metrologist for a major aerospace parts manufacturer. I don't see something like this being a huge issue, at least compared to what I deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Edit: I actually looked into it a little more- it looks like the part is probably machined from casting given that there appear to be four stators which also locate the center mounting point. That's where the concentricity would be set; not by the casting, but by the machining of the center flange. So assuming that the fan's mounting points are within spec, I would say that your friend's part could just be chalked up to machining process that leaves something to be desired. This is actually a trickier part if machined from casting (without the appropriate tooling), but actually pretty simple (and wildly expensive) if machined from billet.
You're right, it was a cast part that had been machined, and (from memory) the machining was not precise enough to locate the alternator (and thus the fan) in the exact center. It kind of seemed liked a backyard job, but the price was anything but.
I think from memory the inside of the circle (which was cast) was not perfectly round. From memory the original Porsche part was titanium, and this replacement was aluminum. But I might have that backwards.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that circularity on the casting would be messed up, you would just think that the person on the mill would have the presence of mind to take a look at it before sending it off to the end-user. We reject castings pretty regularly, and that ID could be turned true without a great deal of difficulty provided the deviation in roundness didn't exceed something like 1/2 material thickness.
What doesn't sit right with me is the fact that for a small run, the price of even an aluminum casting would absolutely motivate me to get it right the first time. At the level of volume that the guy would have to be operating at, I would be test-fitting every part to a car before sending it out the door.
I feel like the relative scarcity of air-cooled 911s coupled with the difficulty of machining the part correctly as a third party is why the part itself is so hard to come by. If a person were motivated, though, there is definitely another way to make a suitable replacement more cheaply and easily with a modified design. That's provided someone is okay with not having a completely factory 911.
A 5 axis mill? Once you had the model you could get one offs in many contract shops. It is by no means trivial but if it is an expensive part you could make a very workable copy. Given the required characteristics of the air flow there are some programs that calculate blade profiles. Maybe the part would end up even more expensive but that sounds like an interesting and worthwhile project.
Probably some entrepreneur ordering them in small quantities from China from a place that makes frying pans one day, car parts the next.
I used to order a lot of custom things from China. Took a lot of trial and error to find good suppliers. They only accept bank wire as payment, so they risk little other than repeat business if they choose to be sloppy.
All plastic parts for appliances: dish drawer wheels, fridge shelves - are all designed to not last, run for $$$ on vendor site if possible to find at all. If you print it - they would come.
Depends on your pricing and margins. There's a huge number of parts that are available but ridiculously priced, often coming out an order of magnitude in excess of what seems reasonable.
Take for instance a kettle scale filter. OK you probably can't 3d print these, but for something so simple they're insanely priced - £5-£15 for a bit of plastic. A whole kettle with filter costs typically £15-£35. Dyson parts are even sillier.
After material costs, time, shipping, advertising, & customer support, how much margin do you think there is to make on a part that already sells at £5-15 (ESP in an environment where spending £15-30 to get a new one is an accepted norm already)?
This is def not viable from my view- at least not for parts that are this cheap already.
lol. 99% of it is margin - it's 50% of the whole retail item cost for <1% of the material or complexity.
That's most of it left for promotion. Domestic appliances, large and small, regularly have small spare parts that attract 25 or 50% of the price of the entire item. Never used to.
That they're already doing well with small appliances in the niche of non-available parts says enough about pricing floor.
I recently had to replace the side wheel motor assembly on a Roomba. The motor and housing were fine, but the gears inside had worn out. I think they were just made out of ABS, so if they were printed in Nylon they would be a lot longer wearing. Roomba do make their robots (at least the 620 I have) repairable and a replacement of the whole assembly was only £20 so I'm not sure if the margin is there, but it is a bit wasteful when the only issue was the gears.
I've also considered creating some upgrades to the stock parts, but it's on my "some day I'll get around to it" list.
The hard part is finding appliances that need fixing. This is super easy if you happen to own a lot do things that break. If not, it becomes quite boring and tedious to scout out things that are breaking for other people, that you have no personal motivation to fix, to get the broken appliance and then figure out the 3d model for the bad part.
It's a neat business model: The person posts DIY repair videos on youtube, which drives traffic to his site. The strollers can easily cost $1000 new, and are often handed down / resold, so there is motivation to keep them running, and they have some weak spots which tend to break. The 3D printed replacement parts can be of superior quality to the original parts.
It seems like once you build up a critical mass of reputation/SEO you could get people to send you their broken parts to reproduce (then start advertising that specific part too)
Then that depends on either how much they're paying for the part and how much you enjoying 3d modeling and the trial and error dof 3d printing. You'll also need at least a real version of the part to copy and maybe even the appliance.
are you concerned about the low amounts of ground nylon that your customers (or really the original customers) were ingesting if this part does wear down over time?
PA2200 Nylon is not water soluble so any particles would stay with the discarded grounds. It’s pretty harmless stuff anyway. Breville’s version wears fast but the ShapeWays one has held up really well. Check out the two year wear study on the ShapeWays shop page; I am really happy with how minimal it is.
Aah I wasn't thinking it through. I guess as long as the fragments are caught in the filter during the coffee making it's likely fine. And for some reason I forgot that coffee is essentially strained/filtered. I have a jura and so I just press a button and it goooooess.
If OP is selling via Shapeways, it's printed and shipped by Shapeways in the user's choice of material. From the link, it looks like the only option for this one is Nylon, but that's about the strongest plastic you can get for things like gears.
Not necessarily suggesting it for this, but for anyone not used to shapeways they have a wide range of materials, with plastics of different types, metals (I have silver wedding rings I got printed there) and ceramics.
I think sellers may be able to limit the materials to known working ones (each material has it's own requirements).
The goal was the unique design, but they were cheap too for wedding rings. I recorded each of us saying something to the other, then took the waveforms and made a ring from each one. Printing came to about £40 for each ring.
If you take a look at the shapeways page OP links he mentions that the nylon material is technically not rated food grade due to it being slightly porous. This can cause particles of the food to stick in the holes. He mentions it's not much of an issue with coffee since that just means some stale coffee, however I imagine it might be more of a problem with milk. It looks like shapeways has a variety of material, however.
Had a Breville expresso machine I repaired multiple times for my wife. The pump was decent, but the electronics were complete garbage for a $500 machine. The main problem were unsealed switches in a humid environment.
If you are someone that drinks no more than 1-3 cups a day, then I see no pointing getting an electric grinder over a higher-quality manual grinder, like the Comandante C40.
Probably going to be downvoted, but I do adult webcam stuff, mostly with private already established regular clients. My net profit can be as high as $1200 per week, $800 on the low side, for a few hours of “work”. I generally use it as a fall-back income when I’m in-between tech jobs but I do it if I’m employed or not to keep my paying client list fresh for when I need it. I could make a lot more, I have a “cam friend” who makes $5k/week regular but he does it full time and markets himself and such. I put the minimal amount of time & effort into it.
I buy cars, repair them and recondition them to my level of satisfaction, and send them back out the door, typically targeting 55-65 year olds. I focus mostly on entry level luxury crossovers around 7 to 10 years old, though starting to also do hybrids since there’s more profit in it since everyone is seemingly allergic to batteries and pack replacement/rebuilds.
Parts are cheap, I listen to music or a podcast, I do all the “PITA” repairs (replacing wheel bearings, ball joints, tie rods, full brake service) that are really just labor in terms of professional repair cost, perform additional rust prevention, and for sale it goes when I feel a new grandma or grandpa would never give a hesitation to load it up with all their grandkids. They also see a very thorough interior cleaning, and a full exterior detail (including paint correction when required).
It has bought every very nice tool I could ever want, most are 20-30 hours of labor including acquisition, and I’m at the point where I have repeat customers (the put a 2nd alongside the first) and have direct referrals. Now the profit mostly goes towards putting a 2nd interesting car in the garage, and some towards moving up the ladder to try to earn more per vehicle.
Selling cars isn’t bad when you don’t have employees to pay, and it lets you sell really high quality stuff. I keep thinking of how much I couldn’t justify doing, and how much my product standards would suffer if I had to pay help.
Can you make YouTube videos about it? I watch Chris Fix all the time, not for educational purpose (I don't own a car), but because they are so freaking satisfying to watch. Seeing things go from 'meh' to 'wow.'
I think the unfortunate reality of ChrisFix is to make videos at that level of quality... takes real time and effort -- plus a vehicle that merits actual work he's not done a video on yet. Hence he only puts out one or two a month, but they're of an extraordinarily high quality, which is evident in his sub numbers and view count.
I've considered making videos, but the reality at the moment is there's not yet the time to do it to my level of quality. At least not yet.
ChrisFix videos are outstanding and somewhat generalized, he really does fine work.
One of my favourite channels has much lower production values (not bad by any means though!), and is much more of a hacker. He buys something damaged, figures out how to somehow fix it up and does so. Often a bit of a bodge, lol. But the videos come out frequently and are fascinating. This channel is "B is for Build". [1]
Another channel I will recommend, more for the awe of seeing an absolute master craftsman - "Arthur Tussik". This fine Russian gentleman is almost certainly the most skilled panel beater on Youtube. His videos are bodywork restoration of mangled crash wrecks back to perfect in one short video. [2]
And finally a recommendation I'm sure any hacker will enjoy watching - "Bad Obsession Motorsport", and their "Project Binky" series. Rebuild of a classic Mini, with a twist, almost every part needs custom fabrication. Simply amazing. [3]
There are a few mechanics who stream on twitch... however that does require some level of interaction and distraction which may just be annoying to you, but doesn't require the post processing. However it's a decent sales pitch and if you do enjoy interactive with people and networking it can be pretty good.
I'd love to see your shop or even just time lapses. I really enjoy watching cnc and hand builds on youtube. It's very helpful to watch these to see what's really involved in say pulling the front end off of a mini-cooper.
It would be impossible to hit my target level of quality live, without heavy investment in the environment, lightning, video equipment, and honestly the help of someone when filming. If I can't hit my own targets, I just don't do something.
The videos would also be too long. Part of why ChrisFix is so well known is he has high-quality, edited, to-the-point content that packs everything into a concise high-quality video. I could not do that on Twitch without great expense, lots of advance planning, and helping hands.
Sure, I'm not going trying tell you what to do. You're the content creator, you need to do what you feel works or you won't make good content.
They're 2 different things, eg there's a huge difference between say ChrisFX and a twitch stream for a mechanic, though they're both basically build logs at the end of the day.
Twitch is definitely more the low overhead mass content version of content. Similar to the Howard Stern Show, or Car Talk, as opposed to The Grand Tour. Thousands of hours of contents as opposed to hundreds, or 10s.
I was just pointing out there's a market for the mass quantity content.
It's actually one of the things I DONT like about the produced car rebuild shows, they often edit out stuff just to make it entertaining to everyone, where I'm wanting to watch just to see the whole thing and the techniques. Much more like slow tv. I'm totally happy to skip through parts I don't care about.
Do you live in the US? In my state (wa) you need to be licensed as a dealership to do this legally and I hear this is the case in all the other states too.
Do you float the titles or just bend over and take whatever arbitrary limit for non-dealer title transfers that the dealers lobbied into existence in your state?
Not really, except out of necessity. Mechanics aren't, cheap, and where I am, really not cheap. Cars are just giant metal Lego.
As for paint matching, I don't. If I car needs any significant paint work, I'm not interested in buying it. It's also a sign that when I get underneath a car, I'm going to find other issues which are going to be an immediate no sale (as in welding required).
Even at normal, non-insurance repair rates (as in, full price), an independent mechanic charges around twice as much per hour than a body shop does for your average paint work (high end a very different story) -- I can get much more $/hour for my labor doing repairs than I ever will doing anything more than leveling a clear coat.
Bread and butter is the Lexus RX, Acura MDX, Honda CR-V and Toyota Highlander. There is zero issue putting them out the door, because the demand is insane. I've also started with Toyota Priuses because there's high-demand, most mechanics are allergic to batteries, and people dump them for cheap over any battery pack issue.
Though I've worked on a ton of stuff, the above is where there's A) enough people owning the above who still think all vehicles explode when their odometer hits 100K B) have inexpensive and easy repairs for simple things that are rotting or are wearing out and C) plenty of people who know better and when they test drive a 10-year old one that feels as good and looks as good as new, won't even negotiate your asking price.
I've entertained the idea of selling BMW M cars, Audi S/RS and Merc AMGs, but the reality is there's far more labor involved, far more to usually fix, higher acquisition costs, less demand, and buyers who are completely insufferable. I've sold several, but in retrospect it wasn't ever worth the time and effort.
> I've entertained the idea of selling BMW M cars, Audi S/RS and Merc AMGs, but the reality is there's far more labor involved, far more to usually fix, higher acquisition costs, less demand, and buyers who are completely insufferable. I've sold several, but in retrospect it wasn't ever worth the time and effort.
That's interesting, when I used to have a shop and flip cars on the side, honda civics and euro cars were the most profitable. Civics because you can fix them up, lower them and throw on a set of wheels and you're good to go are super easy to turn over. Euro cars are easy to pick up at steep discounts when they're older and need repairs, and the parts are actually not bad and once you get the hang of it, they're not too bad to work on.
Of course you'd want to also have accounts with parts stores otherwise you're losing too much on those costs.
However this was 5 years ago so the small crossover suv craze wasn't what it is today.
If you were to start selling BMWs/Audis/Mercs, you might also find your reputation suffering if/when things go wrong shortly after purchase. You're probably better off sticking to reselling the more reliable brands.
Every reliable source for lifetime cost of maintenance I have ever seen shows Toyota is the cheapest, that most other Japanese brands are close behind, and European brands are way more expensive e.g.
That certainly matches what I've seen happen with my friend's cars: Toyotas just keep going and are cheap to fix, Euro cars have something bust earlier in their lifetime and usually outrageously costly to repair.
I am from NZ and as a country we keep driving second hand cars until they are uneconomic to fix, and maybe half of the cars imported from overseas are second hand Japanese cars. We don't have a lot of American cars but my own limited experience with them is that they are as unreliable and costly as the European cars.
You can find some individual models within other brands that are reliable, however if you are buying a car that is 5 to 10 years old, you can't yet know if the model you are getting is a good one, so buying by brand actually makes sense. Quote from article about maintenance costs: "Toyota completely avoids the the most expensive models list" which helps averages (although I think they used median costs in that article).
that's really cool man I'd like to check out some of your wares some time. I'm very interested in giving old things new leases of lives and just refurbishing some of my old stuffs
It's illegal in my state to sell a car for the purpose of making a profit as an individual without a dealer license, and there's a limit of 4 per year.
It's only a "private transaction" if you aren't doing it for the intention of making a profit. (depending on exact laws).
Unless the laws in their state are solely based on volume, they are almost certainly acting as a dealer, which requires a dealer license and a bunch more legal requirements. In most states once someone buys a car with the intention of reselling it rather than using it, they automatically become a dealer.
So here's the crazy thing -- if you pay taxes on the profit you earn, like everything else, your state tends to not care and treats it like any other business.
Though in my state, in excess of 5 vehicles per year they start to care, and prefer you hold a surety bond -- which as of a few months ago, I do for an amount well in excess of the transaction price of the vehicles I typically sell. I also now have a dealer plate, which never goes on anything because some buyers would get weird if they saw one.
As an amateur shade tree mechanic myself I have so many questions! Feel free to ignore if you feel you'd be giving away your secret sauce.
1. Where do you find buyers? I'd be concerned about inventory either piling up or taking too long to sell at a price that even breaks even when you are spending time/money on fixing.
2. Do you feel your value-add is more on the sales side as a broker or is it in the repairs? I know people who just flip cars and do extremely minimal "freshing up" and are also profitable/successful.
3. How do you keep up with the increasingly locked down and opaque ECUs and other systems? More and more diagnostics require factory wizardry these days.
4. You implied that you do paint and body work. Where/how did you learn and become proficient? Most auto repairs are pretty much "follow the steps" work anyone can learn from YouTube, but body work is artistry.
5. Do you worry about liability? I'm OK fixing my own car since if I screw up it's my ass on the line. I'd be less confident in sending the car off to grandma, even if I knew what I was doing.
1. Mostly Craigslist, with a bit of AutoTrader. The reality is AutoTrader is swamped with dealer listings and sponsor listings that I don't feel I'm receiving any additional value for their listing fees.
2. Repairs and preventative maintenance. We average ~4 feet of snow a year, so tie rod ends, wheel bearings, control arms, bushes, flex pipes, exhaust hangers, etc. suffer since no one really maintains a steel car properly. The reality is when even a Honda or Toyota dealer is $125/hour and a Lexus or Acura dealer is $175/hour, people don't replace $18/ea bushings -- but when things rattle or feel loose, they sell the vehicle like it's going to explode.
These aren't difficult repairs, they just require lifting the vehicle (I have a Bendpak Quick Jack) and doing it. People also don't properly clean their undercarriage, and rustproof. I do. Very easy, very inexpensive. Though when many people treat cars as disposable, it lets a lot of nice stuff come onto the market for the well-inclined.
3. Not an issue unless you're in Porsches on up with encrypted ECUs, and even then, that prevents MODIFYING them, not reading diagnostics. Regardless, this has been a problem 0 times since I've started many years ago. OBD-II is a wonderful thing, and there's no weird shenanigans coming from Honda/Toyota at all.
4. I only do paint correction, as in "level a clearcoat" to a mirror finish, and only for vehicles that merit it (let's ignore that any car sub-$150K new comes with some level of orange peel). I do not buy any vehicle that needs a respray, ever. It can be DIY'd very well, but the amount of labor is prohibitive. Not enough money made for the time spent.
5. I've an umbrella policy, mostly because I have one for my primary business, in the odd event I ever were sued. In general, vehicles are sold as-is. Zero concern here.
Regarding point 4, do you even consider small patch work? Perhaps where you would need to apply a body patch, filler, sand & paint?
I imagine with the cars you're working with rust isn't an issue, but could be needed for minor damage. Are you passing on those cars completely or leaving those as is?
Launched in 2016 for free. Started making money in 2018 with $3,000+ MMR. Referral only (side) business. I work full-time as an engineer/principal in growth.
I conduct a form of ethnography, embedding myself in the lives of consumers the way Margaret Mead did among Samoans. I interviews my subjects and the people around them, itemizing the contents of their home (photographing and videotaping), and accompany them as they progress through their day. Then I sift the resulting information for weeks, even months, looking for connections and telltale behaviors.
The service is used mostly by founders for small businesses and startups. I takes questions about sales figures and product lines and reconfigures them into questions about worlds, the context in which people unthinkingly live their everyday lives. The idea is that examining the beliefs and unconscious biases that people have will eventually yield profitable insights for these businesses.
So far, I've done market entry for a few Chinese companies into Japanese market, helped indie game design company launch a successful game, a boutique lingerie shop launch a new summer line, street musicians, and a few cafes and bars.
I do this on the side with hopes to go full time into it soon.
I think this is a fascinating project, but I have to ask. How do you get your foot in the door with consumers? I'd feel a bit sketched out if someone showed up and just asked to follow me around for a while. What's the incentive?
I have done a lot of consumer research for a previous job - I honestly think if you give someone an ear to talk to about almost anything a lot of people will do it.
With that being said, you might get a handful of, "no, absolutely not that's creepy" responses to the request, but if you ask enough people someone will say yes and be excited about it.
Getting started was (really) hard. There are agencies out there who enable the connection between the researcher and consumers for a fee. These agencies usually have a directory of people who volunteer for this type of research work.
It also helps to build a network, for starters I partner-up with many prominent content producers on YouTube and Twitter and pay them a small fee for introductions.
I also pay the people I study on the field (but not always, some are happy to help once they understand what it's for). A lot say no, but you only need a few yes. It's about drawing insights from a small set of data.
This is the most fascinating side business I've read of! Does what you do ultimately help whoever you are following in their business? Have you seen them make changes that have helped the business in small or even larger ways?
The goal of my side project is to use human science to put people back at the center of business decision-making. I work specifically with the founders of business and not their sales or marketing personal.
Studying consumers on their own isn’t enough to be successful. I look at all the data I can regarding technology, marginal practices, client and industry data, and speak to many experts with knowledge on the topic. I analyze the assumptions underlying what I observe happening and identify the gaps (e.g. between the client’s assumptions about their customers and what I observe in the real world, or between the industry’s assumptions about the future and consumers’ marginal practices).
Analyzing these gaps helps me see white spaces that have impact in the market, which allows me to advise my clients on where the market is likely to be years out and ensure that my recommendations are actionable. Since these are new perspectives they often make it actionable. Execution is something they handle and all of my clients have seen a change. Most are repeat customers.
It sounds like this is a form of consulting where would-be founders outsource the idea-gen / problem discovery work to you.
How does the problem statement from the client manifest -- is it usually something like "I want you to determine if there's a market for X", or "I want you to explore this demographic of people," or something else?
Clients come to me with major and fundamental business issues, characterized by a high degree of uncertainty. Most of my work is focused on helping my clients get a view of their business from outside.
As others have mentioned this is a very interesting side gig. How did you find leads on these companies to turn this profitable though? I imagine any company that does this sort of research would have to be relatively forward thinking.
I used to be in technology consultancy and I built relationships and kept in touch. I sent out a newsletter, some reached back and asked for more information, others made introductions and got me connected. Most of the business I get is through referrals / word of mouth.
My base of operations is in Tokyo right now and there's a lot of demand for these services once people hear about it. Often people approach it for curiosity and then I work my leads to turn them into clients.
Not all companies were forward thinking but they have a common traits: empathy, more concerned on providing value to their customers, and emphasize long-term problem solving over quick fixes.
I've been reading books on philosophy, cognitive science and behavioural psychology for half a decade.
For ethnography I don't have any recommendations. I've read books largely to complement my thinking, phenomenology and existentialism. Here's what I've read (notable ones):
Being and Time – Martin Heidegger
The Principle of Reason – Martin Heidegger
Phenomenology of Perception – Maurice Merleau-Ponty
New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time – Ernesto Laclau
Introduction to Metaphysics – Martin Heidegger
The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy) – Martin Heidegger
I negotiated with my current employer, sacrifice salary for time. I get a few extra hours each week. My full-time job doesn't demand a lot. I manage it quite well and get things done during business hours.
I manage my time quite well, I get eight hours of sleep everyday and the rest I try to be productive. I have a wife who understands what I'm trying to do and helps me out. Needless to say I work on weekends and holidays and gave up all hobbies.
It's not easy but it's a choice. This has helped me build habits and a discipline. I am mindful and try not to bite off more than I can chew i.e. understand my limits.
My side project has also changed the way I think about engineering problems and solutions. Since I work on the growth team its complementary rather than diverging.
The philosophy behind my approach to research is based on the phenomenon, the science of how things are experienced. I start by working with my clients to identify a human phenomenon at the heart of their business.
I use psychographics to define customer values, opinions, and life-style.
I'm an avid saxophone player and am taking evening classes in theory, so I made this to solve a problem that I myself had. Nothing else like it on the market!
Every part of this notebook is automatically generated with a bunch of python scripts: the cover design, the interior, the line placement, the margins. The program basically spits out a PDF which I can then send to print shops (which is the hardest part of the whole thing!)
The product is good, people like it, and the hardest part for me right now is sales - trying to get stores to carry it, or get traffic to the site to drive sales! If you know anyone who might be interested...
edit: Okay I've opportunistically created a coupon code THANKSHN for 10% off.
This sounds awesome! I've been looking around at printing specialized notebooks (for various worldbuilding tasks) lately. Do you use local print shops and/or have any you'd particularly recommend?
I feel like the hardest part to get into would be finding a way to keep costs and shipping times down without maintaining a large floating inventory. Have you found that is a problem at all?
Hey, taking a look at the picture on the site I saw that you only offer a format of 8.5" x 11". If you'd like to grow to Europe, other formats like A4 would be very interesting and probably needed. I'd also be happy about one in A5! :)
I actually really really want to do this! It's a chicken and egg thing: do I try to get this 1 product profitable, and then use those profits to invest in new product lines? Or do I try to do multiple versions of the product at first (which comes at higher cost, since I'd start with a small production first?)
Also need to figure out how to ship to Europe more cheaply, since right now I'm sending everything from my little apartment in Brooklyn!
Maybe printing in Europe might already help? – See www.wir-machen-druck.de, probably the most inexpensive German printery (try Google Translator). I can imagine using Amazon and its FBA service might be an option here – not sure if that's something you'd like to consider.
Please find a way to ship these to Europe! It would become my new notebook of choice in a heartbeat but I run through them like (insert some kind of simile here). I would also happily share this with all my musician friends.
I think most users went digital, like iPad or kindle. There're apps where you can type notes or search and buy existing sheets. Of course paper is better for kids or beginners, so you could push your product in that niche.
BTW those digital sheets are pricey, so I wrote some scripts to generate PDF for my kindle, the output looked quite neat. I used LaTeX, Lilypond and perl to comb out unsupported stave notation from songs I ripped from public sources.
Oh, sure. I mean, the first reason is because I am a backend engineer and all I know is python! The second reason is that it made it easy for me to iterate - you have no idea how painstakingly I adjusted the line thickensss, spacing, margins, etc. So being able to just update a little config file was super useful. And, finally, for future product lines (different sizes, for example) using code made it easy for me to, essentially, provide the dimensions of the book and have the code make the "right" design choices to generate a new PDF.
1. Email 50 print shops from searching google about the project and specifications 2. Wait for 5 of them to respond to you 3. Work with them on the specifications and obtain physical proofs 4. Choose 1 which prints the books with an acceptable quality-to-price ratio
I established DamnInteresting.com in 2005, a place where myself and handful of others produce original long-form non-fiction in article and podcast form. Despite plenty of traffic, it didn't reach the break-even point for several years, because I despise advertisements and I refused to add them to my site. I funded the project in other ways, such as donations, publishing a book, licensing content, etc.
Nowadays it still only earns a little every month, but that's mostly owing to a rise in expenses (e.g., I pay the contributors more). But profit is secondary for me, my primary motive is to have an excuse to research and write this stuff, and for intelligent people to consume it.
Kudos and thank you for resisting advertising and figuring out an alternative business model. It would be awesome if there was a whole alternative Internet like this, where ads (and selling user info) was forbidden.
Thank you! I found your site long ago and I’ve enjoyed every article. I often wondered what your plan for it was and would be. This puts a little closure on it. I feel the same way about advertising and wonder what alternate business models could happily maintain such a place while keeping it mostly free and open.
It's a long story, but the short version goes something like this:
At first we worked our cabooses off to publish new original content several times per month. This proved unsustainable, partially because we were becoming more ambitious with our work, but especially owing to stressors that had arisen in my personal life, and I burned out.
I spent a year-long hiatus putting things right, and when we resumed our writing, it was with the understanding that we were switching to a marathon-not-a-sprint publication schedule. The curated column arose to fill in the gaps between our in-house writings. Nowadays many readers specifically visit us for the links, so we feel duty-bound to persist.
Two things, both of which I stumbled into accidentally -
I make lots of jellies once the berries in the garden are ripe; I bought a house in a rural area a few years ago and it came with loads of berries. Might as well put them to use.
It is all done manually (in part because it is meant to be a diversion from my engineering job) - red- and blackcurrant and gooseberries mostly. Last year the harvest was some 1200 4oz glasses of jelly - some 1150 more than my family consumes. Sells by word of mouth.
Also, as my mother is quite into weaving tapestry and it was hard to find the exact hues she wanted for her yarns, I started dyeing for her, using traditional colouring. Turned out there was a (veee-eeery small!) market for that kind of thing, and I now make small batches for some 30-35 weavers. Again, fully manual as the idea is to do something completely different from my full-time job.
I've written a couple of books that sell on Amazon and Apple iBooks - it takes zero minutes per month work for me, but brings a nice little side income. I won't get rich, but it's nice to have the money come in for doing nothing after I hit the "publish" button. Even the printed books cost nothing.
I'm about to hit publish on a photo coffee-table book from my three years around Africa, and I'll write an Africa guide book and The Road Chose Me Vol 2 in the next 12-18 months.
* The Road Chose Me Volume 1: Two years and 40,000 miles from Alaksa to Argentina (https://amzn.to/2vfCYvn)
Stories and lessons from two years driving my Jeep Wrangler down the Pan-American Highway
* Work Less to Live Your Dreams: A practical guide to saving money and living your dreams (https://amzn.to/2OD6UtA)
An eBook about how exactly I can afford to take years off work to do what I want and live my dreams.
After driving the length of the continent, I collected a bunch of information that is extremely helpful to anyone else thinking of doing similar. The vast majority of the Western Worlds "knowledge" of West Africa is so out of date it's useless. My book is from info I learned during my drip from mid 2016 to late 2017, so it's relevant
Check PastBook.com I made a coffee table book from my NYC trip and it’s super cool. Stefano, the CEO, is a very close friend of mine, but I can guarantee on the quality of the products.
> Do you work on the road or take off years at a time?
For the first one (AK->Argentina) I just took time off and lived off my savings account. For around Africa I wrote my first book and I write for multiple magazines while on the road.
> Are you armed, or do you just avoid central conflict areas?
Crossing an international border with a firearm will result in instant jail time in virtually every country on the planet. No, it would be impossible to bring a firearm. You might be surprsed to know I have never heard a single gunshot in three years around the continent, and Ethiopia was the only country I ever saw regular people with firearms. In every other country it's only the police/military, who are extremely professional.
> I take it no family? (hence the 'solo' bit) or are they undersganding?
No kids or wife. I did have a girlfriend with me for some of the Africa Expedition - living in the Jeep proved too much for our relationship.
For eBooks you can write it in any editor you want - word, pages, it doesn't really matter. Then just export to ePub and you're done.
For my published books I want ultimate control over the layout, so I write them in LaTeX to get the pdf to go to the printer. To get it into an eBook I use pandoc to convert them. I wrote a script that does it for me, and massages the resulting ePub until it's exactly what I want.
My published books is about 70,000 words. Writing it didn't actually take very long (a few hundred hours I guess), but then I probably spent at least that much time again editing and revising multiple draft rounds.
Nonfiction about my adventures or guide books. I find it much easier than fiction, though I'm an Engineer and not overly "creative" when it comes to writing.
I taught myself circuit board design and found a niche market that I designed a few products for that sold like gangbusters with zero marketing for a few years until the market cooled off and low cost knock offs started entering the market.
I also found that you could use the same CAD program that I learned to design PCB's to draw outlines to cut out on the laser CNC machine at the local maker space. I ended up finding a niche on ebay building open air computer cases. Because of the economics of shipping large items from overseas and the low cost of the materials I was using I was able to under cut the imports on price by like 60% and still make a nice amount of money on a $/ hour basis.
In hind sight the best way to find these kinds of opportunities is not to be looking for them. You really just need to get a really deep understanding of a hobby or industry or market that interests you in some way and once you have that then these sorts of things kind of pop out of the woodwork.
> I taught myself circuit board design and found a niche market that I designed a few products for that sold like gangbusters with zero marketing for a few years until the market cooled off and low cost knock offs started entering the market.
Can you elaborate a bit? Did you teach yourself literal circuit board design (but already had a background in electronics/hardware)? Or did you start from scratch and learn how to design an electronic circuit?
What was the niche (broadly?)
> In hind sight the best way to find these kinds of opportunities is not to be looking for them. You really just need to get a really deep understanding of a hobby or industry or market that interests you in some way and once you have that then these sorts of things kind of pop out of the woodwork.
1000% agree. The single best way to find an idea is to be seriously and deeply involved in a hobby/area of interest. There are so many ideas out there screaming you in the face.
It was a bit of both, My degree is in CS, I only took one EE/hardware class in school that was more about programming CPLDs than anything else. These days really all you need to know math wise to build simple stuff is V=IR and P=IV, things everyone learns in high school physics class. Everything else you can usually get by looking at the reference circuits in data sheets or looking it up as you go. The hardest part for me was finding the time to get over the learning curve of the PCB design software, in my case I learned EagleCAD. After I did that and formed good habits with how I used the software I now able to do some pretty complex stuff. The limiting factor now is probably that my ambition has outgrown the software I learned.
The niche was building adapters for old server power supplies so you can re-purpose them for use as general purpose 12 Volt power supplies. It was a thing in the RC community for a while to charge batteries but it got really big in the 2014 - 2017 time frame due to the Bitcoin mining industry needing low cost high wattage PSUs.
About 10 years ago and ten years into my career, I had been working and stayed at the same job way too long and both my salary and career stagnated.
I had two part time money making side projects. I was a part time fitness instructor and had some rental real estate.
Teaching fitness classes was fun, I made a lot of friends, and it gave me a release valve from working at a computer all day. Real estate was a headache.
Around 2008 -2011, a few things happened. The real estate market crashed and I did a few “strategic defaults”, I realized I could make a lot more by getting better at software engineering and job hopping, and I got married and gained a wife and two (step) children.
I gave up all of my side projects, concentrated on my career, started building a network of recruiters, former coworkers, and former managers and doubled my income over the next 8 years (not bragging, I still make about the average of principal engineer/architect/team lead in my area).
Even looking over the next two to five years, I should be able to increase my income by 50% (working for local companies) to well over 100% (if I can get into Amazon) as some type of cloud consultant, “digital transformation consultant”, or “Architect”. The only thing stopping me now is the travel requirements. I want to wait until my youngest completes high school.
But, that means I can’t juggle my job, family commitments, working out, filling in some technical gaps and a side job/business.
If I worked on a side business now that wasn’t purely passive income, it would be doing side software gigs involving technology I was already good at. I’m not sacrificing my job (main source of income), my time working out, or my family. The only thing I could realistically give up would be filling in skills gap and learning more.
So instead of in two years being able to command 50% to 100% more as a cloud consultant/architect, I would still only be able to make what I’m making now. I will be spending a lot of time building instead of sharpening my axe.
Even worse, I risk being further behind technically in two or three years and not even being able to find a job in development in the then hot technology.
It’s like the difference between deciding to go to work right out of high school and postponing starting your career and going to college.
I raise bees and sell the honey. Good for a few thousand a year and the money makes up for the stings. I have a couple of dozen chickens and sell the eggs, but this makes very little money since eggs are so cheap in the super market. It pays for the feed and that's it. I wrote an Amazon book on how to play harmonica in the style of Sonny Boy Williamson II that sells steady and makes me beer money. I sell a couple of my Science Fiction short story collections on Amazon. "Error Message Eyes" and "Frogs in Aspic", but after a good first year they sell only a couple of copies a month. I sell four or five Science Fiction stories a year, but only occasionally do I get pro rates. It's nice to see your name in print, though.
How many times a day? I usually can't get away from being around the hives without a sting. Luckily the bees are usually calm and a honey bee sting is like a bad mosquito bite. It is not like a wasp or hornet sting.
If I open the hive without gloves and veil, I can get stung, but not always. If I have to "work the hive" I have to go full bee suit to prevent being stung.
If you can't handle being stung then raising bees is not a good hobby. If you can stand it, honey is like gold, and people will hound you for it.
I write books about programming at www.learn-with.com
Right now it is just a bunch of Angular and related stuff; but I Want to expand to React.
I make ~$200 a month, which is pretty good considering how little I put into promotion. I consider the platform my own personal reason for learning / experimenting with new stuff.
Not really a productive venture, but it was profitable. I used a 3% cashback credit card on a financial company's money sending service with no fees, and sent my sister $3,500 every two days. She'd then eventually pay me back through bank ACH (also free). Then I'd pay off my credit card every week so my credit balance remained low. Made about $1,500 a month for a year, before they stopped giving cashback for transfers.
Yep, the standard practice nowadays is buying Visa gift cards and then using them to purchase money orders. It’s usually only worth the time and effort if you have a good sign up bonus on your credit card. However, I’ve also been looking into some creative and profitable ways to utilize the “float”—the pile of cash you’re sitting on for 4-6 weeks until the bill is due. It’s definitely worth my time if I can use that productively and roll it over each month...
I was actually thinking about ethics a lot while I was doing this little project. By ethics do you mean morals or something different? What framework would you suggest for determining the ethics/morals of doing something like this, where we're playing by the legal rules by trying to optimize for our own benefit?
Think about it like this. The logical conclusion of people acting like you did is that credit card issuers increase interest rates to make up for their losses. That makes life worse for everyone but the people exploiting the loophole. You’re no different from the people who exaggerate their losses to insurance companies in order to claim extra insurance money. Because of them, premiums have gone up. You might see yourself as some kind of Robinhood figure, but ultimately it’s going to be the other people participating in your network that suffer.
Thanks for the reply. There is a clear difference between claiming extra insurance money and what I'm doing: lying to get more insurance money is fraud, while what I'm doing is exactly what the service is intended for (sending money to others for free).
But using your framework of, "if everyone did this, how would this affect the business and others using the business," then I (and many others) are doing a lot of other unethical things. Ad blocking and card counting (in blackjack) clearly would be deemed unethical under this criteria, but here's a bunch of other more tangible examples.
There's a popular pastry place that has 50% off sales on Sunday afternoon because they are closing Monday so they sell the remaining stock at a significant discount before close. I only go there on Sunday afternoons, but if everyone did that, then the prices would go up for all.
Another thing I do is using the books, video games, movies, and streaming services offered by my library and never buy any real media. But if everyone did this, then bookstores, theaters, and streaming companies would go bankrupt.
You may be following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.
The cashback was created as an incentive, you found a way to exploit the business model for personal gain in ways that can have an impact on others ability to enjoy the system while having a material impact on the provider of the service. Most in your position will say "but I am only a small piece of the cog" however, if a small minority starts to think the same way, it can have a real impact on a variety of things, including trust between parties.
Everyone tries to rationalize their actions, whether it is or becomes socially acceptable is another matter.
Well, everyone that takes a VC subsidized ride on Uber is also having a negative impact on their business. If the business makes rules that are unsustainable for their business, it’s their fault. They could very easily set limits to curb abuse.
Uber are obviously trying to get people to use their service. If using their service is bad for them, that's their fault because they were deliberately trying to encourage a behaviour that was detrimental to their business.
That is different from finding a way through the rules which is clearly unintended.
The best way I've seen businesses get around this issue is to just have an upper limit on the incentive like interest applies only to the first $x. Its often a nice bonus for people that were going to use them anyway but not enough for people to justify exploiting the incentive alone.
I’m going to preface what I’m about to write by saying yes I understand life happens and I’ve carried a balance on a credit card charging high interest at one point in my life.
- If you have a credit card with decent cash back/rewards program. The interest rate is going to be higher. If you are carrying a balance month to month. You’re doing it wrong.
- If life happens and you do end up with a balance and your credit is decent, you should be able to get a no interest for x months, no interest balance transfer.
Credit Cards aren’t a life necessity. Homeowners insurance and car insurance are. Taking advantage of the rules as they exist is not unethical. Insurance fraud is both unethical and illegal.
Be careful with stuff like this. Credit card contracts typically require a fee for anything that amounts to a cash withdrawal instead of a purchase. Depending on the exact construction, it might be fraudulent to knowingly breach the contract to bleed the bank. If it’s not worth talking to a lawyer about it, it’s probably not worth doing.
A simple overall rule here is to consider what the intended behaviour was from the company offering this. Anything that fits the rules, but is outside what you would consider expected behaviour is essentially exploiting a bug.
A similar thing happens when someone offers "unlimited storage" for home broadband users backups and people start hosting many many terabytes of porn / isos / whatever. Sure, they're entirely within the allowed behaviour, but it's clearly intended to make it easy for people to backup their photos and documents without having to know if a gigabyte is enough or not.
I would say I feel like using something in a way not intended (even if allowed) that is detrimental to the person/people offering it is unethical when considered in isolation.
I'm actually a little surprised this needs saying, is this not a common view?
edit - I guess not if it was downvoted so quickly (I know, I know, I'm not complaining about the internet points, it's honestly very interesting to me). Are people that on board wit h heavily abusing systems just because it's technically within the rules?
Remind me to never offer free pizza at a HN event as someone may turn up, say "you didn't specify a per person limit" and walk off with the food intended for everyone.
Somewhat disagree. Not only do these spending bonuses encourage endebtedness and consumerism, but don't forget that such bonuses likely aren't offered the the poor (read: bad credit score), and the credit card companies use and sell your information to advertisers (and probably hedge funds) while credit rating agencies likely do the same and are basically not held accountable (see Equifax).
If these are companies like JP Morgan - Chase, then let's also not forget how they were helped by the American taxpayer during the recession and that basically nobody was held accountable.
I'm also of the opinion that it is basically impossible for any corporation to do business ethically, so I largely have no problem with it.
For the past few years I've been buying, renovating, and selling small-ish houses. My dad was a contractor growing up so I picked up most of the necessary skills helping him out during middle and high school. I mostly work on weekends and holidays which makes it a bit slow going, but I've made a reasonable amount of money. Even if the money was worse I would still probably do it, I really enjoy both the physical aspects of the work and seeing a house go from a beat up old husk to a shiny new place! I have to contract out some of the work (electrical mostly) because I'm not a certified electrician, but otherwise it is a one man show.
Depending on the country you are in, it shouldn't be that hard to become a certified electrician.
Granted, I have a degree in electrical engineering, but certification was not part of that degree. I got the certification at a night school, IIRC it took 2 months with about ~5 hours per week in effort. If you don't have experience with electronics it would obviously take a bit more effort, but it's totally doable.
I look for smaller places that I can handle on my own (2 bedroom max), no major structural/foundational issues that would require bringing an engineer in, no demolition that would require an engineer, that kind of thing. Finding an inspector that you trust and that knows their stuff is really key here. Basically the same kind of things you would look for when investing in house flips (which is really all I'm doing, just for fun on my own).
I would then have to deal with finding tenants, property maintenance issues, etc (or pay someone to do this), which is more than I really want to do right now. At that point I would be closer to a full time landlord, not a full-time software engineer who enjoys working on houses on the side!
A coworker found a company that handles most of it, and they call when they're tasked with fixing something, he then figures out if he wants to pay them to fix it or what have you, or if he just wants to do it himself. He says it's basically paying for his rent. Of course it's all about researching the companies. Worse case you sell off the house. Totally worth looking into though.
I did a coffee kiosk once. It went well, but required a large amount of energy and focus.
We did a little twist on the business model. Starbucks sells nice places to sit down. We sold drugs. The model, from logo design to promotions, was designed to create a habit loop where people would get their morning coffee from us.
It was so profitable that I seriously considered making it my full time career, expanding cafes all over the country. The only thing that changed my mind was 1) the startup boom 2) dealing with minimum wage workers is extremely depressing. The tech industry has its abundance, whereas with food and drinks, it was clear that income was limited and had to be managed carefully.
Did you consider paying more than minimum wage? I wonder if a higher wage would enable you to expand your talent pool to folks who would enjoy slinging coffee a couple days a week on the side to improve their situation while actually finding it fulfilling work. The math does seem fixed, there is only so much time in the day and the inputs have fixed costs, but if you can get it all well tuned to the point where effort and time in is worth it then it can just run for a long time until some change in conditions makes you walk away instead of tweaking again. It always seems to me like spending more for a better product should be the first tweak attempted rather than the race to the bottom so many places undertake.
* Act as a standby for dish pits at the local restaurants - filling in only when someone doesn't show since I don't want to take what could be a lifeline job for someone AND having a standby like me means they can keep their job instead of just being a no-show
* Write articles for other people - usually on topics I really don't have a lot of knowledge or feeling about to start.
* Mow lawns - I'm allergic to grass. Builds character.
* Labor - the harder the better. Beats the gym and there is no better way to turn a Budweiser into a $100 beer than sweating your tail off digging a ditch.
* Help startups bootstrap or otherwise avoid "the man" while they find their dream.
* Sell chicken eggs when the hens push more than I can French toast.
* Make films, music, stories, pamphlets...often these cost more than they make, but I refuse to call them losses. Slightly passive income stream.
* Consult - since I was 11 in '81 I've been paid for helping people with their broken technology. I'm not exactly on the edge of all tech like I was, but I still serve a purpose.
* This is an odd one, but I have found it at least as profitable as a few side projects over the years. Be lucky. Actually look for money on the ground ($143 last year), win prizes, expect financial benefits from transactions, assume your (educated) choices will make money.
* Sell plant starts - a little late for this year, but it's one of those things you can save seeds from your regular groceries / food prep at home and early Spring...ba-da-bing ba-da-bang...kind of almost free plants!
* Investment clubs - getting a small community of a tech nerd, business geek, social butterfly, and either an accountant type or law dog, plus whatever else you happen to be friendly with, you can end up with a very smart engine for investing. Invest in either public stock, local businesses, people with ideas, or projects of your team's own creation.
That sounds interesting. What kind of people, and how do they find you? Where are the articles published? How much time do you usually have for writing them (days, weeks, months?) Do they get published under your name or the buyer's name?
As far as I can tell, there is no gold standard for text brokering, including TextBroker.com, but start with Textbroker Alternatives and you'll see lots, and plenty of reviews to find something you like.
After that, get old school and check out the Writer's Market Guide 2019 (or anything from the last couple of years). Keep in mind, all the magazines and industry publications out there need a ton of content every month. What are YOUR favorite places to read? Heck, it can be poetry, fiction, DIY, anything.
Timeline, word count, style, pay and all the other tidbits are almost always agreed upon prior to your efforts. Unless you want to pitch a story. Which can be super fun! And these can be blogs, industry rags, magazines, newspapers, and so on.
> Sell plant starts - a little late for this year, but it's one of those things you can save seeds from your regular groceries / food prep at home and early Spring...ba-da-bing ba-da-bang...kind of almost free plants!
Might work with vegetables, but aren't most grocery fruits derived from cuttings?
For selling, you'll want to have starts, from seeds. Peppers, cucumbers and so on. Organic is usually far easier to sprout - especially if they haven't been radiated or whatever they do to things to keep them "fresh".
For eating, it's fun to toss scraps like lettuce feet, scallion spiders, and ginger thumbs and eventually (almost) never buy them again. Potatoes are fun since they grow so fast and just a bucket by the window is enough.
Of course, a trip to a local farmers market and you'll have an even better starting stock.
Actually it doesn't even work with most vegetables. To get the kind of yields people are used to, many vegetables are hybrids. The kicker is, the second generation plant (the one that you'd grow from the seeds) is no longer a hybrid, so you won't get the same plant.
I'm a lawyer who doesn't do much (any) marketing. But when someone gets referred and calls or sends an email asking for help with setting up an LLC, helping wind-down or sell their business, or even something small like reviewing an NDA, I can jump in.
I'm solo, so I don't have any overhead and I can charge far less than anyone else. This is also entirely a side gig, so volume is so low that I can be responsive, helpful and more like a thought partner who is also helping out on legal.
It depends on how busy my practice is. If it's pretty busy and what I'm taking in would at least cover the cost, I'll purchase insurance for the period.
If I'm not handling very many matters, I might affiliate with a firm that has insurance to keep costs down or forego insurance. If I forego insurance, I take care to disclose that fact to the client before beginning the engagement.
My practice is corporate law, yes. Everything from basic stuff like commercial contracts, incorporation and financings to complex mergers & acquisitions.
That is pretty cool. I have a friend who mentioned he helped another friend sell his company once. He was a business guy, not corporate, but it kind of piqued my interest.
Got any advice on getting a referral to someone like you? I’m a founder who could use some advice independent of the company’s counsel. I’ve tried my non-startup network but am only getting leads for the big firms. How do I find an attorney like you? (New account for privacy reasons)
The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use iFixit[2],[3] to drive the traffic. It passively makes enough to cover my own coffee needs forever. I spend about 20 minutes per month fielding questions. This all happened because my grinder failed and I could not get parts.
[1] https://www.shapeways.com/product/NASLAGCCP/breville-coffee-...
[2] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to...
[3] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG600SIL+Dose+Control+Pro+Coff...
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