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Hi Spiceheads,

At least once a year I get it into my head that I want to start a business or at least start something to try and earn a bit of extra cash on the side that may or may not develop into something more.

Every time my mate and I come up with an idea it often just ends up being just that, an idea. Usually our ideas are good and could/probably would work but often neither of us have the capital to get it up and running, and/or the time to commit that is required to get it successful without one of us sacrificing our job to do so which neither of us would want to do unless we already had a steady turn over and could pay that persons wages.

My question to you guys is, what do you do to earn a bit of money on the side or have any of you started a small business or thinking about it? I know the obvious thing is obviously IT related jobs but I am currently happy in my job and not looking to start anything else IT related, it would probably be something completely different, especially since want to start something with a good mate of mine who is not in IT, but has a lot of other good skills and we complement each other well in terms of range of things we could do.

Our current plan is to start printing our own t-shirts, but this is completely new to me and looking into it I think I could get setup with a basic printing setup for around £600. We have some good ideas that would be different from other t-shirts already out there and wouldn’t have to sell too much (50?) to pay off our initial investment and then it could be a great little earner on the side, even if we only sell the odd t-shirt here and there on eBay for example.

Potentially also thinking of putting something on Kickstarter, that way if there is enough interest then would pay for all the equipment up front so would be substantially less risk and also would be a good gauge as to whether people like our t-shirt ideas.

Any advice, suggestions, ideas would be very welcome. Interested to see your point of view and thoughts.

Cheers

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From all my business acumen coming from watching dragons den I may not be the best here but they always seem to look negatively upon people not working full time for their idea company as it shows a lack of drive for it - starting businesses should and is a full time enterprise, however I am of a similar opinion where it is good to keep the regular cash flow coming in. If you want it to be something on the side, then it will really only ever be that. If you want it to grow bigger you will need to seriously think about doing it full time before it could even maybe turn a profit.

However you see so many people get ridiculed for giving up their day job for a rubbish company idea. Float the idea past someone else who knows the business and won’t hold back with giving critical advice - and listen to it!

Remember, half of all new companies fail in the first 5 years. Be wary and don’t you are something new and outside of the ratios and statistics.

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Right now I’m taking a low risk approach just to ascertain visibility within the IT community. I’m not “raking in the dough” but I am getting recognized, and I am growing and at least gaining stability by hosting a small blog. I’m also working with other spiceheads to make it all work.

www.goblinbyte.com

@davidg @jimmy-t @breffni @jeremyscalpello

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As someone who’s ran a business before - it blows. Everybody sees the obvious - working for yourself, setting hours, etc, etc. What they don’t see is all the red tape and BS that you have to go through on the back end.

For example - I ran a martial arts school full time for 3 1/2 years from 2002 - 2006. I was always being told “it must be nice only working 4 hours a night 3 times a week”. What they didn’t understand was all of the hours that were put into scheduling, marketing, balancing books, etc, etc. I should’ve purchased stock in Tums or Rolaids during those years, and I barely made enough to survive. I ended up having to go back into IT consulting in 2005 to be able to make ends meet.

I finally called it quits in 2006, and went back to a full time IT job, and I’m SO glad I did. There are days that I think about becoming a consultant, then I smack myself.

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Bakels-

I like where your head is at!

Running your own business is tough, but awesome. I did it from 2003-2008, full time, and made pretty darn good money and it was built primarily on word-of-mouth. I didn’t even have a web site until 2005.

It’s easier today- online resources about. Here are 2 buddies of mine you should follow:

First, check out my boy Pat Flynn at SPI . Also check out my man Kimanzi. They give you enough free info to get started.

I’m personally on my 5th business. It’s about trying things until you hit on something that works.

Shirts are commodities. Anyone can get one anywhere. Your best bet is going to be to make yours different and memorable. Marketing will make the biggest difference. If you just buy a press, no one will care. If you start a Kickstarter, it won’t go anywhere unless you can do something different or unique- you’ve got to stand out.

I know you have what it takes. Start digging!

@bakels

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Hi Mike,

I’m currently working a 4 day week at a non profit in a technical manager role, whilst trying to grow Dara IT, my new company.

Yes you can have something part time and you will have seen people on Dragons Den who have grown something slowly, organically, then hit success with it. It all depends on the type of work needed, do you need to be chained to a desk 5 days a week 9-5?

A few things to keep in mind.

  • Set a budget of hours you will work and stick to them.

Find out how much time you will need to do this, put calendar entries for when you will work on this.

  • Tax & Insurance

Be very careful, make sure you do things properly. You don’t want to be slapped with a fine for getting your self assessment wrong. Register as a sole trader, consider if you need insured couriers handling your big orders of materials. (Not hugely expensive)

  • Time/Emotional cost

Do you want to come home, answer emails, file expenses, deal with irate customers because their medium order does not fit their XL body.

  • Don’t be too proud, ask for help!

When starting something new, you can have a lot of fun but try to get as much help/advice as you can. You would not believe the number of things you forget to think about.

  • Logs, Tracking, Evidence, Accounting

Invest in an accounting package, be disciplined with filing every expense, every pot of money in. You’ll very quickly see if you are making a profit or not, even after the 1st month.

Log every client email and order, take backups of everything

@bakels

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All of the above being said, good luck!

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Forgot to add Breffni to my original post :-D, fixed, HI BREFFNI!!!

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You’re already going about this the wrong way.

A business isn’t something you start “for a bit of extra cash”. That’s what Craig’s List, etsy, and garage sales are for. Starting a business is very much like raising a child: it takes a massive chunk of your time, a lot of effort, and more money than you think. More, it often takes a few years before you’re profitable enough to actually take money out.

If all you’re looking for is a bit of extra cash, you’re probably better off grabbing a few hours at a part-time job.

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I ran my own consultancy for 13 years. The first 2 were out of my house, primarily break/fix stuff for shudder home users. The next 3 I held down a full-time 2nd shift factory job while I took on larger clients in the mornings and late at night for after-hours upgrades.

You need to ask yourself: Why do I want to do this? Where do I want it to go? Am I willing to do what it takes to get it there?

I’m sure there’s a market in your area providing IT services to other cottage businesses. Heck, I’m employed full-time and still do side work in the evenings and weekends. Thing is, I’m very picky about taking jobs. Since I don’t need X every month just to keep the lights on, I regularly turn away difficult clients.

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The obvious answer is, do IT work on the side - fixing computers, upgrading them, hell you could even become a part time MSP for local businesses. If you don’t want to do that, then it’s really up to you. I’ve given guitar lessons in the past. That was fun, although a bit frustrating when kids don’t spend any time practicing outside of lessons. I’ve done a few websites too. I’ve earned a little money from donations on my gaming stream. Ultimately though, I just want to be able to enjoy my time off work doing things that I want to do.

I’ll be getting a new housemate soon, and I’m already in good shape financially, so that should only improve. I think at this point, my time outside of work is more valuable to me than it is to most other people, so If they aren’t willing to pay $40 an hour or more, which is about double what I make at my full time job, I’m just not interested. They can hire some poor high school or college kid that doesn’t know what he’s doing if they want to pay minimum wage for IT work.

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I tried my hand at full on consulting in the 90’s (yes I know I’m old, move before I hit you with my cane!) When it comes to Tech and dealing with people I’m unstoppable, but running a business taps many other skills sets that many of us don’t have developed. I had a number of customers, but I was really bad at getting billing done properly - REALLY bad. Like forgetting to bill for months bad. I discovered I need help if I want to run a business, I just don’t have the skills to do it all. It’s hard work, there is no such thing as a quick side business if you want any measure of success.

Now as to your question about ideas to pursue, the best chances are the ones that minimize your personal risk. Avoid things that require you to lay out any funds before you start. The T-shirt business sounds cool, but won’t work as well as you think. The novelty market is already saturated with web based companies, you can’t t really compete. The custom market has a lot of players in most areas, heck in my small town of 900, there are two places that do custom t-shirts, and it’s one of many services they have to offer to stay in business.

Look at business ideas that fall inside your wheel house and ideally can be started up with minimal layout. I’ve thrown this out a whole bunch of times, and it’s solid idea that works so I’ll throw it out again. Getting small/med companies online. Walk into any small business and ask them if they thought about getting a web presence. offer two packages, basic and premium.

basic = simple website, domain name, and email (set up to the device of their choice) and monthly updates to the website

Premium = basic stuff plus social media presence (twitter, facebook, pintrestest, etc - anything that applies to their business) with weekly updates on social media

charge $200 a year for basic $350 for premium. add $50 to the first year for setup on basic, $100 on premium

a hosted web service will run you at most $200 a year, it’s $10 a year for a domain name. As soon as you have two customers you are making money. For the webpages, just build from existing templates. I do this now, I spend a three hours a year on each customer outside of initial setup. ( only have a couple clients but it pays for my personal stuff) and I only have to remember to bill them once a year, so I can manage that.

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This cannot be emphasized enough.

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Services like SqureSpace and Strikingly make this kind of business crazy easy.

Keep in mind, though, that “web presence” means a lot more these days than having a website. Being able to help customers navigate social media advertising is a great consulting upsell (assuming you have those skills). You’ll also get questions about print advertising and graphic design.

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I have a photography business on the side and what I love about it is that I can choose how busy I want to be with it. It’s still in the growing phase, so I am not super busy to begin with, but if it ever gets to be too much to handle, I can just only accept the jobs I want. The downside is that I spend a lot of weekends and weeknights taking photos and editing them, but I really enjoy it so it doesn’t bother me.

One thing I had to do is make the business legal, which took some researching and a little bit of money. I am not sure how things work where you are, but I have to pay quarterly sales tax and if I made enough doing it, I would have to do quarterly estimated taxes. I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of every income, expense, mileage, and sales taxes so I don’t get in trouble with the government.

As for a website, at first I had a free website, but my goal this year is to double business from last year and I knew that meant having a more legit site, so I paid $100 or so with Squarespace for one. It was super easy and I highly recommend them. I also created an Instagram and FB page for my business, which has helped get me more exposure. I really recommend doing at least the Instagram, especially for t-shirts. Instagram is really growing as a social media platform for businesses and I tend to follow a lot of brands/restaurants on Instagram. You could get some cool photos taken of the shirts (I would totally do it for you if I lived nearby!) and use a bunch of hashtags to get people’s attention.

Hope this helps you a bit. Let me know if you have any questions!

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Some great stuff here guys! Thanks for all your input. Given me a lot to think and read about but loving the suggestions and advice.

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For some extra cash I do front of house audio a couple times a month at my church for weddings and funerals. Every once in a while there will be something bigger that comes along, like a concert or conference.

There was a time when I was between jobs that I was “self employed” and did home PC repair, couple business consultations, even dabbled in graphic design and motion graphics, and did pretty good, actually (enough to pay the bills). While rewarding, it was really stressful to not know if I would get a job in time to pay all my bills for the month. Also, when tax season rolled around… yuck.

But don’t let what anyone says dissuade you. Yes, it is tough and there’s a chance you’ll fail, but there’s also the chance that you’ll do really, really well and look back at it as the best thing you could have ever done. If you think of that one great idea, run with it and see where it takes you!

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I teach and I blog. Truthfully, I put more time into the actual “Running” of the business than I do making the money. So while I work full time, I also work full time running the business.

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Yeah … don’t forget about taxes. Failing to even file a “yeah, I didn’t make anything this month” report on time will result in penalties that will make your head spin. If you actually owe and don’t pay? shudder

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