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Summer Businesses for High School Students?
An anonymous reader asks: "A friend and I are going into our final year of high school, and given a variety of factors (the relative paucity of technology jobs for HS students, etc.), would like to start our own business. We'll probably have about $1000 in capital, but (in effect) start out with no other resources other than our own skills (technical and otherwise). We have no constant access to a car, which means on-site tech support is effectively out. We'd like to start something in the technology field (IT, software design, hardware construction - we can solder, web design, etc.), but are open to any suggestions. We'd also like some sort of business we can start this summer, but can continue to maintain. What do you suggest as a business idea for the summer->longer term?"
Rent a box from somewhere, and harass friends, family, and neighbors if they know anyone who could use a web presence. You provide the hosting, set up domains and stuff, and if they need it, some basic web design.
There's even a few packages out there that have a very simplified markup structure (ie. _underline_ and *bold* and stuff) that means your potential clients can edit pages directly.
Your costs are monthly fees to your host, and one-time fees for domains and such. Income is monthly hosting fees from clients, and one-time or recurring fees for web design, graphics, and maybe even some freelance coding for special features and whatnot.
I'd not even bother.
/ad aware and the like make problem solving easier on consumers
1: Everybody can make a website.. Notice I didnt say good
2: Anti-crapware like the new AOL discs
3: Real software issues on MS systems always require a reinstall-Use vendor wipe disc
4: If its a hardware issue, you cant repair motherboards and the like. On dell/gateway crap, it's "Buy New Machine"
5: You're just HS students. I'm 22 and people look down at our age group as consultants. The "Consultant" is supposed to be 30-40 after numerous lay-offs and fires (from idiotic companies that lie to get out of unemp.)
Yeah, at 22, I'm jaded enough to be a consultant. I've not seen it all, but close.
Here's my advice to high-school students looking to be entrepreneurial during a summer: find a way to make or import something interesting and sell it on eBay. You don't have a lot of overhead and actually wind up with real-world experience of building and/or supporting a product.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
As a 19 year old college student with a ton of ideas all the time, its hard to pursue any of them. I keep a small notepad with me at all times. Anytime I get any inspiration (if its in the middle of a professor giving a lecture), I write it down. Then I can go and review it later.
But I was in your position a few years ago (I was a Freshman in highschool, not a senior). Here's what I did (in 2000):
The local science fair had a web design contest. I had been doing web design for about a year, mainly for my own amusement and knowledge. I also had a close friend who did the same, and since we needed teams of 2, we formed a web design team. We made a web page (one we actually wrote, didn't use Dreamweaver) according to the specs of the contest, and totally blew away the judges. They thought it was the most amazing thing ever. They both gave us their business cards, told us to contact them, we did, and bingo, $12 an hour work for each of us. We were psyched.
Eventually our client fell out from beneath us and never contacted us back, but we got paid for the work we did, so all was good.
Another science fair story: the magnet high school program I attended required everyone to do a science fair project every year. Since I was(am) a decent programmer, I always did stuff in the computer science category. I loved the stuff, and the category was small so I was always almost guranteed to win. I did a project on Artificial Intelligence one year, and OpenGL another and Massive Parallel Rendering a third year. All the judges loved it, and a lot offered me jobs. I already had a well paying job at the time, so I passed on them, but I got my name out there.
Those are my opinions and experiences, take them for what their worth from someone in your shoes a few years ago. Keep in mind, as well, that all of this cost me nothing (in fact, it all made me $$$ as 1st place at the web design contest got me money, and so did 1st place at science fair, not to mention the actual jobs).
Good luck!
-Vic
Great advice except for the no taxes part. That's against the law. You are required to report your income whether it's cash or check. Actually, some of your clients will probably prefer to write you a check anyway so you will have a paper trail.
Furthermore, if you want to account for your time in order to impress a potential employer in the future, you had better have your ducks in a row; there are ways of finding out. Otherwise, you will have to lie and say you spent the summer doing nothing. That might be dodgy given the fact that 30-40 people around your neighborhood will testify that they hired you, and hundreds more saw your flyer.
Maybe you are OK with working under the table like the thousands of carpenters and the like who try to get paid in cash, but if you ever want to do work for the federal government either as an employee or contractor, they will probably want to know every job you had for the past 10 years, so you then have the choice of perjuring yourself or admitting that you owe back taxes, neither of which is particularly great news to the employer.
Finally, you should consider that finances are a vital part of running a business; the accounting and tax work you will do will be useful experience for later on when you start the next great software company or whatever you end up in.
Good luck!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.