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5K views 43 replies 23 participants last post by  Homesteader1 
#1 ·
Is there any home-business out there (stuffing envelopes, making crafts etc), that is really legit? I have a friend who was asking me this so I looked into it on-line and am very sceptical, though I do understand the lure of this - working out of home.
Thanks
 
#2 ·
Sounds like your friend is looking for a home based JOB. As far as I know, all those ads about reading books, stuffing envelopes, making crafts etc.. are all scams. I only know of a few people who actually have jobs that let them telecommute and they work in IT, one guy works in telemarketing. Most people who work from home have a personal business selling some type of product or service.

If you want something flexible, sell items on Ebay. Selling individual items one at a time is OK but if you can get hooked up with a local wholesaler then you could list items at BUY NOW prices only and sell single items at higher volumes. I talked to a guy who does this with cabinet hardware. You make more money vs. hours spent and you don't have to use any of your own money to buy the products to sell.





sentree said:
Is there any home-business out there (stuffing envelopes, making crafts etc), that is really legit? I have a friend who was asking me this so I looked into it on-line and am very sceptical, though I do understand the lure of this - working out of home.
Thanks
 
G
#4 ·
My wife tried some type of a home business money making profit which had something to do with sowing doll clothes if I remember right. She was suppose to get paid X amount of dollars per 200 orders or something like that and suppose to be able to do X amount easily in a days time. She rushed like everything to do her daily quota and then she never recieved the amount they had promised her. They would say that so many orders were faulty and they would dock her so much and take it out of her check. She learned her lesson on those gimmicks. Also her grandma tried the stuffing envelopes and sending them out in the mail. I don't remember what the problem was with that but I do remember her son and daughter and a grandkid helping grandma out so she could make her quota also. It kind of turned into a family business that nobody wanted to do.
 
#5 ·
There is no limit to the number of home-based businesses. Jobs are different.

Please consider a search on this site for Ken Scharabok's free info on homestead businesses. Also check out the free business advice from SCORE.org (Service Corps of Retired Executives) available in the USA.
 
G
#6 ·
I agree with ajoys that eBay is something worth looking into if you want income from at-home work. My wife and I have eBayed for three years now and it's been good to us (as supplement to our full-time jobs), though we're a bit weary of the non-stop work. We're not retiring, just cutting waaaay back and so that I can go back to school in the next year or two.

The key to eBaying successfully is identifying your niche. Considering selling cell phone accessories or printer ink cartridges on eBay? Forget it-- everyone and his brother is already on there with that kind of stuff. Consider what you have in your area and what you know about or are interested in learning about. If you happen to live in a place where all the yard sale antiques are dirt cheap, maybe that's a possibility-- learn to recognize the valuable stuff and give it a whirl. Some things are impossible to sell, others people will beat your door down for. If you do eBay some stuff: be honest, be honest, be honest. Build your feedback by describing things carefully and honestly, taking good pictures, packing things carefully (pretend your sending a Ming vase to your grandma), and shipping in a timely manner. I'd tell you what we sell and how we do it, but then WE wouldn't have a niche! :)

Best of luck if you give eBay a go!
Darren
 
#7 ·
Darren in TN said:
I'd tell you what we sell and how we do it, but then WE wouldn't have a niche! :)

Best of luck if you give eBay a go!
Darren

Smart person. A lot of people have trouble coming up with their own ideas so if you did mention it you would have 3 other people doing the same thing next week. :)

I use to talk to this guy online about internet businesses. He started a business online, sold it for a million dollars. Bought it back when the new owners went broke and is building it back up so he can sell it for 5million (he has all ready turned down offers around 3mil) and then stick the money in a long term bond or something and live off the interest. He brings in an easy 50k a month and works out of his apartment, you would never know if he didn't tell you. I have talked to him a lot, getting help etc.... and all this time he has never told me what his website addy is or what kind of service and/or product he is in to.
He won't say because he knows if he did, he would have more competition next month.
 
#8 ·
sentree said:
Is there any home-business out there (stuffing envelopes, making crafts etc), that is really legit? I have a friend who was asking me this so I looked into it on-line and am very sceptical, though I do understand the lure of this - working out of home.
Thanks
Yes.. There are some out there that work,but they are not easy or get rich quick. We started 2 yrs.ago. We make hand poured soy bean candles. It was a lot of testing, and it is a continual job of testing, because the market is always changing. It has been real good to use. We have both quit our day jobs, and just working this. And we can put you to work also. We started this business, the wife worked as a flower aranger for a large florist for quite a few years before starting the candle business. These soy candles are relatively new, in that a lot of people have never heard of them. They burn a lot longer, and do not smoke up your house. and the ones we make have a real strong frangrance that smell as strong at the bottm of a jar as at the top, unlike a lot of the store bought ones. If anybody is interested go to www.soycandleworks.com. If you have trouble, try later, don't give up. our 2 boys are working on the web page a lot. with up dates. There you will also find a 1-800 no. I hope we can help you help us. we have several gals as reps now, but could use more. and don't let any obstickle bog you down. We are a new company, that hates the prices the stores charge for junk.
Thanks for your time
Ken in Minn
www.soycandleworks.com
 
#9 ·
Are you personally making the candles yourself or are you part of a multi level marketing company that sells them?


Ken in Minn said:
Yes.. There are some out there that work,but they are not easy or get rich quick. We started 2 yrs.ago. We make hand poured soy bean candles. It was a lot of testing, and it is a continual job of testing, because the market is always changing. It has been real good to use. We have both quit our day jobs, and just working this. And we can put you to work also. We started this business, the wife worked as a flower aranger for a large florist for quite a few years before starting the candle business. These soy candles are relatively new, in that a lot of people have never heard of them. They burn a lot longer, and do not smoke up your house. and the ones we make have a real strong frangrance that smell as strong at the bottm of a jar as at the top, unlike a lot of the store bought ones. If anybody is interested go to www.soycandleworks.com. If you have trouble, try later, don't give up. our 2 boys are working on the web page a lot. with up dates. There you will also find a 1-800 no. I hope we can help you help us. we have several gals as reps now, but could use more. and don't let any obstickle bog you down. We are a new company, that hates the prices the stores charge for junk.
Thanks for your time
Ken in Minn
www.soycandleworks.com
 
#10 ·
Ebay is good if you feel 50 cents an hour is a living wage. Ebay has continually raised their prices and between them, Paypal (which they own) and the shipping costs - believe me when I tell you they are the only people making any money. The competition is fierce and always driving the price of things down. It started off like a nice friendly garage sale and now is a cut throat business. Lots of scam artists and simple people that have no qualms about taking your money for junk or for nothing. Ebay will eventually fizzle out. It was a phenomenon for a while, but will be a body of water with too many sharks for most; how sad. There are a select few making money (real money), but it is now like anything else - tough to make a living for the little guy ;-( This is the truth of that story.
 
G
#11 ·
Earthship has a good point that should be considered. You really need to look at your margins and plan carefully. If you're working an hour for 5 book sales selling old books from garage and yard sales, then let's assume you're buying for .50/ea and selling for an average 2.50/ea. So, 5 x (2.50-.50) = $10/hr. BUT there are fees. The fee structure just changed and I can't remember what it is, but let's say you accept PayPal for payments and just use standard eBay listings and use their photo service (we do not because we can host images better and cheaper elsewhere.) You've got a listing fee of about .30/ea, a final value fee of about .13/ea, and let's say you put in two pictures at .15 total/ea. Let's give you a break, though, and say you charge your customers the actual cost of shipping so that you don't have any damage there. Receiving PayPal payments for each item (at $4 each to figure in shipping, too) comes out to .39/ea. Now you're making (2.00 - .97) = 1.03/ea, or $5.15/hr. That's half of your gross gone in fees. It'll take you a long time to pay off your digital camera and start profiting. Don't be discouraged, though. There are a lot of people making good money on eBay, and eBay's sales are only going up. Last time I looked they ended 7 million sales daily for gross sales of $28 million. It's a BIG marketplace. To give you an idea of how we sometimes come out on deals and why I still think eBay has plenty of merit, we've bought things for $50 and not been able to give them away (dumb-- real dumb on my part) and we've also bought low and sold for several hundred times our purchase price. THAT is when the fees don't hurt so much.

Nobody will ever get rich on eBay without a LOT of hard work, but if you're willing to honestly devote 20hours a week to it (and I mean WORK at it-- business isn't a game) you'll do fine once you identify a workable niche. Think outside the box and don't let any experts dissuade you when you know what you're about. I've met too many that are just dead wrong. How much can you make at it? Depends on how smart you are, how hard you work, and how good your area is for finding saleable stuff.

Good luck in whatever you end up doing!
Darren

(OH YEAH! I almost forgot. If you need a digital camera, I strongly recommend the Fujifilm 1400. Ours is 3 years old and still kicking. Takes great images, uses rechargeable AA's. They're inexpensive and you don't need any better resolution for eBay. When ours dies, I'll buy another, even if they're discontinued and I have to buy used.)
 
#12 ·
If your friend can type, there are jobs at home for transcribers (medical, legal, etc). For the medical you do need some training in medical terms. Also some smaller buinesses do use at home workers to keep books and payroll records for them. But this would be like a at home business and you'd have to get your own clients. Tax time is coming, so tax preperation could be a good home based business. Most H&R Blocks start looking for people to train this time of year, she could go for a job (it's temp) and get the skills to start her own home base business later.

Any job that requires up front money or a fee is a rip-off. If you seek employment (regular job) the company doesn't tell you, "We'll hire you if you pay us such and such amount" Be fore warned.
 
#13 ·
ajoys said:
Smart person. A lot of people have trouble coming up with their own ideas so if you did mention it you would have 3 other people doing the same thing next week. :)
My mother did craftwork at home (mostly jewelry work), and grossed about 40k/year for many years, before her death. Her work stood out at craft shows, simply because it was different. The reason it was different, was because of where she obtained her raw material, which was unique(and cheap).

She never worked a show where she didn't have at least one person walk up, and wanted to know where she got such&such.

Mom never told.
 
#15 ·
:) Wow, lots of interesting and good advice here! I would just add that if you have creative talent in any area(building birdhouses, quilting, making unique clocks, etc), expand on that. The trick here is to be interested in actually making the stuff to SELL. I can sell all of the birdhouses or quilts that I make but I hate making them just to sell them. You have to have something I lack and that's self-discipline... and then a sense of what's good pricing(which I also lack)so you pay for your materials and time. Some little marketing tricks help too, like everytime you make a birdhouse, include a little booklet inside of it that tells a bit about where you got the wood, where to locate the house for maximum bird appeal and what species you made it for. This can apply to anything you make so it's special. I don't mind sharing at all...I am abyssmal at marketing! LOL

Hope you get somewhere with this...a lot more info here than just stuffing envelopes! LOL LQ
 
#16 ·
Bluebonnet

You can do a search for "Medical Transcriptionist", or try local hospitals and doctors offices. Even if they don't need the help, they may point you in the right direction. Same for Legal, some lawyers will hire to have court proceedings transcribed, but this is a high stress job, especially if they are do in court the next day.

Here's results from Google.............

[ame]http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Medical+Transcriptionist&btnG=Google+Search[/ame]
 
#17 ·
I use the SMC program to generate a little extra income. Just carrying the wishbook in my truck I sell enough to make an extra 40 to 100 a month and a few hundred during the christmas season. Don't make the fortunes Tom Bosely touts on the infomercial , but its worth the initial investment and the $20 a year membership.

www.smcorp.com for mor info.
 
#19 ·
One thing I've found is to DIVERSIFY, don't put all your eggs in one basket! I work in an industry that is very seasonal, and I do work at home for about 6 months out of every year. I do lawnmowing/landscaping, ebay (I'd rather not reveal my niche), and a variety of other projects that, when added together, make a fairly substantial amount of money. One of these things is free to start and easy as heck to build up, it's a company called Survey Savvy. They send out surveys via email and regular mail that you complete and are then compensated for. You get $3-$6 per survey, sometimes more for particularly lengthy ones. The only problem is, they don't send offers out very often. But the neat part is, you also receive credit for any people who sign up under you as well as any people who sign up under them! I don't think anyone will ever retire from this source alone, but I've managed to make about $40 or $50 a month the past two months, and I've only been a member since the beginning of September. The secret to making decent money at it is to build up the number of people signed up under you. I post on a few message boards, and where it is allowed I've included a link with the URL to the company in the signature of my posts. If anyone would be interested in signing up, please go to the URL I've listed below to do so. I would appreciate it!

http://www.surveysavvy.com/?id=1030358
 
#20 ·
earthship said:
Ebay is good if you feel 50 cents an hour is a living wage. Ebay has continually raised their prices and between them, Paypal (which they own) and the shipping costs - believe me when I tell you they are the only people making any money. The competition is fierce and always driving the price of things down. It started off like a nice friendly garage sale and now is a cut throat business. Lots of scam artists and simple people that have no qualms about taking your money for junk or for nothing. Ebay will eventually fizzle out. It was a phenomenon for a while, but will be a body of water with too many sharks for most; how sad. There are a select few making money (real money), but it is now like anything else - tough to make a living for the little guy ;-( This is the truth of that story.
Ebay is just like any other business, some win, some lose and there is always competition.

The people who pick more appealing products and have better marketing and sales techniques will make the money. A Business is a lot of hard work. You have to put in a lot of upfront effort while you aren't making much if anything
while you establish your business so that you will start to become profitable. Most people just don't have the vision or commitment to put in effort while not making money with the possibility of making money later.

When I look at how profits are generated with any business then look at ebay I would personally try to sell single products in volume instead of having many, many products that you only sell one of. I think you would have the potential to make more money per hour and it would cost less to get started.

If I was selling single items only once then I would go after more expensive items with higher dollar margins. It would cost more to operate but I believe the profits would be better. I just talked to a guy who sells used cars that he buys at auction on ebay. He said he makes an average $700 per sale.

Either way you really need to think how you can maximize and leverage your time to make more money per hour. If you can't leverage your time then there is a direct linear correlation of time spent vs. money earned and you only have so many hours in a day.
 
#21 ·
CraftyDiva said:
Shrek

Don't you have to invest $300. just to get into this deal?
Yes you do, however they do have an installment plan now and if you reach a preset amount of merchandise purchases , the initial investment is credited to your account. I joined in 1993 when a membership cost $450 and I made it back the first month. I finally was refunded the initial membership in 2000 after purchasing in excess of the required amounts.
 
#22 ·
If I was selling single items only once then I would go after more expensive items with higher dollar margins. It would cost more to operate but I believe the profits would be better.
Yup, thats what I do when I feel like Ebaying and the opportunities present themselves. Making $20 on something is just too time consuming and too much hassle. I could understand selling lower dollar items if you devoted your entire week to selling on Ebay.

Lets face it, most "stuff" is in the city... so if you're near a city, you should be able to make $5k per year on Ebay quite easily... with only a few hours per week invested.

cheers,
 
#23 ·
I had an aunt who made a bit of extra money filling the little vials which single long stem roses go into. She would empty a box of the vials into a tub of water with plant food in it, then she would sit and watch tv while picking up the vials and putting the cap on and droping it back into the original box. I think she was getting $.02 each and could do like 1000 per hour. Sorry I dont have any info on the company she worked for.
Kirk
 
#24 ·
ajoys said:
Are you personally making the candles yourself or are you part of a multi level marketing company that sells them?
We at soycandleworks make our own candles, lotion ,creams,soap and lip balms and also doing testing on some other products, that will soon be available for our reps. Our business is growing. doubling by the month. we tripled our last yrs. sales. That should say something of our products. Home-based business is not dead, or "all scams".
Thanks
Ken in Minn.
www.soycandleworks.com
 
#25 ·
Ken in Minn said:
We at soycandleworks make our own candles, lotion ,creams,soap and lip balms and also doing testing on some other products, that will soon be available for our reps. Our business is growing. doubling by the month. we tripled our last yrs. sales. That should say something of our products. Home-based business is not dead, or "all scams".
Thanks
Ken in Minn.
www.soycandleworks.com
Hi Ken-
What exactly is it that you're looking for? Distributors, or producers? Or both?
 
#26 ·
Originally Posted by Ken in Minn
We at soycandleworks make our own candles, lotion ,creams,soap and lip balms and also doing testing on some other products, that will soon be available for our reps. Our business is growing. doubling by the month. we tripled our last yrs. sales. That should say something of our products. Home-based business is not dead, or "all scams".

I don't think anyone here is so foolish to believe Home-Based businesses are dead or that they are ALL scams. Lots of good comments here. The important information seems to be the fact that evaluating ALL your costs and maximizing your gain at the end of the day make for success. The comments about selling fewer items, higher priced items, on Ebay is a better way to go. Now Ebay just recently changed their pricing structure to reflect this sales technique. They raised prices for higher ticket items and lowered a few costs in the smaller ticket items. Having been a Ebay seller to some degree virtually since it's inception, I can say with some authority that Ebay is ONLY interested in making money and getting more and more of the sales. I supposed one could argue this is good business sense and I won't argue that other than to write that is the way it is. From my vantage point it has taken much of the fun of Ebay as a virtual garage sale and turned it more into a virtual catalog in that now you DO have to sell big ticket items to make money because of the costs involved. It was fun to see crafts and unusual products and many bargain small items. Having a soy candle business is good in that it is a rather unique item and good for you. We recently sold gourds we grow on our Ranch - usually the shipping was nearly as much as the gourd, and these are NOT heavy items. In five years the shipping has increased so much that it just does not pay to ship low cost items - so maybe the local five and dimes will make a come back ;-) I have found that the MLM marketing process inflates the cost of products and is as much about the excitement of selling as it is about purchasing a product. Many of them operate like a church with God taken out of the equation ;-) Due diligence is the key to developing a successful business of any size or type.
 
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