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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?"
1) Spend $1,000 on clothes and a lease on a phat car
2) Use clothes and phat car to get hot women
3) Pimp out hot women
4) Profit, motherfucker. Profit.
I beleive if you live in certain places, they pay you for donating sperm. My summer job when I was a teen, was more like summer volunteer work.
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Support Indy Music. Buy
...on the web! Then get 10 million in VC funding and go public.
Oh wait, it's not 1999. Forget I said anything.
Programming of any sort (including web design) is probably the most portable of the IT trades. You can do it from your house, or from your dorm room if and when you go off to college. Beyond that, maybe building custom-order systems for people, but it's unlikely you could ramp that up in 3 months. You might also check out itmoonlighter.com for some available contracting work in your area which might not require you to be on-site.
I'm not a cool guy, I just play one on T.V.
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.
Since you guys are (most likely) minors and can legally repudiate any contracts you sign, many folks are going to be rightly cautious about dealing with you. You can make decent summer cash with a gas can and a lawnmower. I would have said get a paper route, but most paper carriers these days are retired folks with station wagons. One retired guy with a station wagon replaced me and my two brothers, plus a few other paper carriers when we gave up our routes in the late early 1990's. If you have friends who run a business, you might be able to get some web design work tossed your way, but I think you'll find that mowing grass will provide a more steady stream of income. Sorry to be a buzz kill, but I was 16 once, too. Don't lose your entreprenurial bent, though - it will serve you well once you join the majority. I've started 3 companies - cratered two and sold one, but I've had a lot more fun than my friends who've stuck with their "safe" jobs.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
And little money. Check
And you're young. Check
And don't have much of an idea on what to do. Check
I hate to be the first one to tell you, but million dollar ideas aren't sitting around waiting to find you on slashdot. It's going to be up to you and your friend to decide what's best here. As a consultant I can tell you, with no idea what you want to do, you really should hire a consultant if you want this to be anything more than you making webpages for people you know over the summer.
You're going to be fighting an uphill battle, most businesses won't talk to you based purely on age and lack of business experience. The one thing I would suggest if you do this, do it right and get insurance, because if you're handling something worth thousands, you don't want to be held liable if you break it.
I work at a local comuter retailer in my city, one of the top requests we get from our customers is: "Do you guys or do you know of anyone that offers training?"
They just want to know basic stuff, how to use their computer, how to copy files, create folders, etc really basic stuff.
Our business doesn't have the space or the resources to make this happen. But it would be simple to do and something that high school kids could pull off with a little investment of money.
You could check out an auditorium at a city library, they often have facilities for such things, including screens and projectors. You could hook a laptop up to it and do your demonstrations there.
Q&A's, how to, basic stuff. May have to pay a few bucks to use the facilities, but long as you balance the costs:profit, shouldn't be a big dent.
What kind of customers can you expect? The older generation, elderly retired people are new to computers still, they don't learn quickly, have surplus income to spend and have the time and interest to attend such a training class on general computer use.
They're really into geneology and email correspondance. Little else, so although it's not the best use of your tallents, it should be rewarding finacially and equally rewarding improving some old farts quality of life.
How to get the word out. Basic cheap marketing that targets your market. The Newspaper, they're one of the few audiences that still read it. Cheap too. Putting flyers up at senior centers, veterans hospitals, etc. anywhere old people hang out. Charge a minimal fee at first, just to gauge what your expected turn-out will be, jack the price up a bit afterwards once the word-of-mouth starts within their communities.
Should work out well, I do this stuff on the side on a one-on-one basis (since I have a car) and the money is pretty good. I usually charge $175 an hour, but if you're going to have more bodies in an auditorium, shoot for 30$ a person, something basic that everyone can afford.
Good luck, better than working at McDonalds all Summer (although working there would really give you a reason to go to college).
If I had some kind of magical business plan for a company that only needed $1000 in seed money and a couple of high-school students, I sure as hell wouldn't be explaining the details of it on Slashdot.
I'd probably be selling it on a late night television infomercial with Tony Robbins and that other guy with the shiny teeth.
When dealing with stolen underpants, repeated rinsing is most definitely a good idea!
I have an excellent opportunity for you. I am the ASSISTANT COLONEL VICE FINANCE MINISTER of a corrupt third-world dictatorship, and I am trying to embezzle foreign aid money. I have diverted FORTY-SEVEN MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($47,000,000) from the International Petroleum Reserve Slush Fund to a separate expense ledger sub-account within my country's incomprehensibly complex banking system.
Unfortunately, my country's laws require me to find a RANDOM STRANGER ON THE INTERNET to complete this transaction. If you have the IQ OF BREAD MOLD, this could be you! I need to transfer the money into a U.S. bank account, rather than an account in an actaul banking haven. We would split the money as follows:
Now, to begin the transaction I simply need $1,000 from you as an EMBEZZLEMENT TRANSFER FEE. For reasons I can't explain, because I'm making this up as I go along, I am unable to pay this amount myself, though it amounts to FIVE THOUSANDTHS OF ONE PERCENT of my profit.
Simply withdraw your money in small bills and FLUSH IT DOWN THE TOILET and my operatives will remove it from the sewer system and deposit the money into your account. I TRUST IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS H. FUCKING CHRIST that you are a trustworthy person who will do the right thing.
Sincerely,
COLONEL DOGUM GUNUN KUTLU OLSUN
Consider
1) So, given it takes money to make money, $1000 isn't going to net you much in ROI.
2) Instead, write something gratis that other people will use, and will give you something to put on your resume after college.
3) Open up a sourceforge account to organize your project. Do all the project planning work out in the open - project goals and descriptions, requirements, specs, docs, code. In the future, you can point people to this as a sample of your early work (keep it updated). Have a GUI (I don't recommend Web apps for something like this - too much infrastructure), write it in C++ (what I suggest), Java, or VB, depending on your talent and audience (and resources - Gnu C++ and Java are free).
4) People don't use 80% of software they buy - so make that 80% open-sourced 'infrastructure' libraries and such, and the remaining 20% closed-source plug-ins or specialized customizations (and a good installer - people tend to buy stuff that has a good installer).
5) If someone wants a feature or a bug fixed, see if they will pay for support.
6) Leverage other people for the product.
7) Learn how to market your product. Just see it as an experiment - don't be shy, be outgoing, and specifically, be clever.
Do some market research: go and figure out what someone wants to do that they can't do now, or that the software to do is expensive. How? Ask them!
The criterion for your research should be - you should have a representative sample of the population nearby, they probably should be a small business (since individuals don't pay much and usually need more prettiness-per-unit-usefulness than a small business solving a specific problem would need), they should have some general-purpose computers that are underleveraged (people do one or two applications on them (mail, word/excel/quicken, and Minesweeper) and don't really use them to their full potential).
Consider what target audiences you have around you: small, non-chain restaurants (specifically their back office); professional practices, like small dentist/physical therapist/massage therapists/chiropractor offices; the corner bodega - they might have a cash register, but no computer tracking of stock so they never quite know what their inventory is or how much to buy - sell them that. House painters/plumbers/small general contractors. Churches/Synagogues/Mosques.
Find something some group of the people above do that's tedius, and see if you can make it trivial. Don't be afraid to ask a lot of people, and say 'no' if it looks like too much - even if they will pay you. Do _not_ get in over your head.
KISS - keep it simple, silly. Bang-for-the-buck is the keyword for this sort of development. You are trying to make their lives better/easier/smarter, and they might need 'just one thing'. Consider the first spreadsheets - they merely edited columns of numbers and added them up correctly, and saved and read them to a file. This saved an _enormous_ amount of time for people who had to do this stuff day-in-day-out. Almost nothing subsequently has had as profound an impact on their lives as taking the grunt work out of moving raw numbers around with pen-and-paper.
-J
The summer before my last year in high school I had a cheap beater of a pickup truck (a 1970 Ford F-150 with a motor and transmission out of a Mustang (V8-302, 3 speed manual tranny) - it was ugly, beat up, and cheap. Also had lots of room in the back for gear. Estimated cost : $500
... something that involves pushing buttons and moving a mouse around ... if you do let us know because a bunch of us would love to do the same.
Bought a used lawn mower, cleaned it up and sharpened the blade with a file. Estimated cost : 100 total.
Got an electric weed-eater for about $40 new w/ a 100' heavy duty extension cord.
Other crap : eye protection, ear protection, maybe a second mower and trimmer because there are two of you.
Total cost, roughly your entire $1000 budget.
Get started by printing out 1 page flyers to put on people's doors in neighborhoods (nice neighborhoods.) Each place you do will take you about 2 hours max with two people, and will pay $40, and needs to be done every two weeks. You can do like 4 each day tops, and if you do a GOOD job you will have awesome repeat business. Totally a cash business, so no taxes.
It takes some time to build up a client base, but once you two do a good job you will have more business than you can imagine. $800 free and clear every week on a full schedule, possibly more. That's $400 a week per person free and clear, $1600 a month.
It is hot, sweaty, dirty, demeaning work - which is why you will have so many people eager to have you do it for them. If you aren't too proud to sweat you will make more doing this than doing 'computer work' - esp. now.
Maybe you will find something that you can do with your $1000 start up fund, something that will net you $5,000 apiece in three months without access to a car
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
What the hell is that?
> Please don't start up a hosting company.
Followed by a link to reseller accounts for starting a hosting company!!!!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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.