Money making ideas

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Fred
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Money making ideas

Post by Fred »

There are a lot of fun ways to earn money. Post them here.

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Original_Intent
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Re: Money making ideas

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If anyone wanted to become a general contractor and build good quality homes in the smaller range - bigger than a tiny home but say ~1000 sq. ft. and not gouge people, I think you could make bank. Mayber come up with a standard layout that was very well designed, but then not do modifications, just cookie cutter them suckers out and let the customer worry about customizing the exterior and landscape etc.

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mudflap
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Re: Money making ideas

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Original_Intent wrote: May 30th, 2023, 1:02 pm If anyone wanted to become a general contractor and build good quality homes in the smaller range - bigger than a tiny home but say ~1000 sq. ft. and not gouge people, I think you could make bank. Mayber come up with a standard layout that was very well designed, but then not do modifications, just cookie cutter them suckers out and let the customer worry about customizing the exterior and landscape etc.
I thought ivory homes was already doing that... ? lol...

but no, there's no money in "good quality homes". My gosh, have you seen how they build homes these days? we're here in tornado country, it's just sheathing over 2x6 frames - and they permit 4 story apartment complexes with this method! They could do better, but they don't. Why? because code says they don't have to. y'all already know my place is built like a fortress.....no cookies here - it's all steak and potatoes.. :)

Everyone starts out wanting to build a quality home for the customer, but material cost and labor, as well as bank financing on large subdivision projects turns it into just another "build and sell as fast as you can". So you can go high end choosy, or you can mass produce, but you can't profitably do both.

What you want to shoot for, as far as profitable, is a good crew that can get the job done at lightning speed. My buddy and his crew of 3 have been all over the usa building log cabins - he's close to 100 at this point. With just 3 workers, he can stack a log home and get the roof on and windows in in just 10 days. And not those kit log homes with 8" "logs" - we're talking real, raw, freshly peeled trees with 24" butts - a custom log home.

If you want quality, you have to pay for it, and nobody wants to do that.

What I would recommend along these lines would be building decks. permits are usually easy to obtain, the construction method is pretty straightforward, engineering is easy (you span the lumber 1.5 times its width in inches - so 2x8 can span 8+4 = 12 feet), the materials are pretty much the same from job to job - lumber: PT 4x4's, 2x12's, 1" PT 5/4 decking, bags of concrete, simpson hangers, deck screws. The tools are pretty cheap too - chop saw, skilsaw, drill with lots of extra batteries, level, string, concrete mixer. Of course, with the financial insolvency going on right now, banks getting choosy on who they'll loan to and for how much. This type of business (one that relies on the customer providing thousands in cash funds up front) might feel the squeeze this year. But if you can find customers with cash....

A guy I knew at the phone company got pretty good pouring concrete. He would bid out jobs, draw plans, hire an excavator, and tie all the rebar, then call the concrete truck. He was doing all this as his side hustle on weekends. Didn't own anything beyond simple hand tools and a few power tools.

gutters - same thing.

fencing - same.

I feel like subscription farming (where you have a bunch of people sign up for weekly produce deliveries) is probably something you could grow into, but you have to be solid at gardening. Maybe better would be have a few clients that buy from you, and let them distribute it. I got a local market guy who wants to buy whatever blueberries I have extras of. It's not much, but last year I think we got 25 lbs, and that's after 10 lbs the year before. This year, we planted 20 high-yield blackberries. We got them from friends at church who got 50 lbs out of 10 plants their first year.

We'll see what the bananas do this year, but I have 4 plants. If I can propagate them and turn them into 16 or 20 plants and figure out a good method / fertilizer for getting them to produce here where we live (zone 7)... we could sell "local bananas" - that'd be a novelty item.

We get a discount on our property tax if we claim it's a farm, so....

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