business ideas
Mobile Business Ideas – Mobile Massage Business
Mobile business ideas can provide many advantages – little or no overheads for a start!
At SmallBusinessIdeas4u.com we see growing potential for mobile business ideas. Why? Simply because as so many folk become increasingly pressed for time, any service which can come to your customer’s door and save them time and traffic, will undoubtedly have an edge over the competition.
And for the business owner – being free from the shackles of 9-5 and the four walls, can be liberating (and scary – if you don’t have a good business plan).
One of our favorite mobile business ideas is massage and bodywork therapy. Of course, you’ll need qualifications in massage and/or bodywork, but for those who have studied in these fields, going mobile can bring many more customers at a much higher hourly rate. As a massage practitioner, you will be likely to find that many of your potential clients may find it physically difficult to come to you if they are in need of bodywork therapy for injuries, pain, etc.
And for many of those potential clients who consider massage therapy to be a necessity and not a luxury, driving home in the traffic after a relaxing massage can somewhat defeat the purpose of the treatment. Not to mention the growing number of spas and retreats that offer massage and bodywork services, without wanting to hire a full-time therapist.
A mobile massage business is one of our best small scale business ideas – as a specialized service, it’s unlikely you’ll have 100s of employees (or 100s of headaches to go with it) – at most, you might grow to a handful of staff or contractors – or you could make quite a satisfying income as a team of one.
So, getting back to the bit about having a good business plan – this can really make or break your mobile business ideas, regardless of the type of services you provide.
But when it comes to a mobile massage business, the best advice we could find comes from Jules Hamland, aka The Bodywork Mentor.
From what we read in her Go Mobile – Your Road To Freedom ebook, which you can read more about here, it seems she has a significant level of experience not only in the fields of massage and bodywork therapy, but also in running a successful mobile massage business. Her guide will provide you with valuable insights that will save you both time and money.
She points out that most massage training courses do not include any information about mobile business ideas. Although instruction is provided about starting and operating a business, it mostly covers the conventional business model of leasing premises.
When it came to running a mobile massage business, the advice Jules Hamland repeatedly received was: “Just take your table, your business cards and BAM! – You’re in business!”
She found this to be far from the truth – and it was some time before she managed to figure out the nuts and bolts of how to operate a mobile massage therapy business – both safely and successfully.
Jules Hamland has now compiled all her knowledge into a guide that we here at SmallBusinessIdeas4u.com believe is indispensible if you are serious about mobile business ideas for massage and bodywork therapy.
The Go Mobile – Your Road To Freedom takes a thorough and practical approach to starting your own enterprise. Just some of the topics covered include:
- What are your demographics?
- Who is your competition?
- How to market yourself
- Getting referrals
- Advertising
- Return on Investment
- Safety & red flags
- Starting your business on a shoestring
- The rewards of organization
Recycling Business Ideas – Wood Pallets
We love recycling business ideas at SmallBusinessIdeas4u.com, so when we heard about the Pallets for Profit program, our curiosity was aroused.
Relatively unknown among recycling business ideas, wood pallet recycling is not only environmentally friendly, it’s pocket friendly, too.
You will need a truck or van, which makes this a great side business idea if you already have such a vehicle. This business could be incorporated into many existing businesses, especially if you find yourself with an under-utilized truck.
In a survey conducted in 1995 (which you can read here), it was estimated that 185 million wood pallets were sent to landfill in that year alone.
That’s a lot of pallets – and a lot of landfill.
The survey mentioned that some pallets are re-used, but every year new wood pallets are made – accounting for about 40% of the hardwood timber produced in the US.
This survey is over 15 years old, but there’s no reason to think that less wood pallets are being manufactured now – in fact, it’s probably a whole lot more – which is why this program makes it to the top 10 of our recycling business ideas.
Wood pallets are used by myriad of industries – cement producers, furniture manufacturers, importers, exporters, chain stores, transport companies … it’s a long, long list and there’s no shortage of them out there.
Pallets For Profits provides all the information required to start your own business in wood pallet recycling – click here to go to the PalletsForProfit.com website.
The ebook is only $29, so it’s not a big investment for the information which will give you a valuable head start with your recycling business ideas.
The Pallets For Profits ebook program includes:
- How and where to find wood pallets for recycling
- Parts, grades and pricing for wood pallets
- The best vehicles to use for collecting wood pallets
- How to sell your wood pallets
For those of you looking for more creative business ideas, you can always turn those wood pallets into works of art!
For inspiration, we’ve included some of our favorite recycling business ideas that actually make wood pallets into useful objects. We gotta admit we like the idea of making stuff more than sending it for recycling, but this does require more effort. Wood pallets can take a bit of hard work to pull apart and sand down for furniture, but we love the end results – and there’s no limit to the creative business ideas you can come up with.
Allwood of Central Florida not only supplies wood pallets, but recycles them into outdoor furniture. Wood pallets that are beyond repair are made into garden mulch.
The photo here is just one of their designs – appreciated by cats, plants and humans alike.
You can see more of their creations at www.allwoodpallets.com
If you would like to start a business making chairs from recycled wood pallets, check out this site www.recycledgoods.com
You’ll find lots of artistic recycling business ideas from artist Shelton Davis at his flickr site here
And for the really adventurous among you, SmallBusinessIdeas4u.com loves these houses made from recycled wood pallets:
httpv://youtu.be/pFGaW2FdKB4
What we like about PalletsForProfit: It’s one of the best recycling business ideas – reducing landfill and saving trees at the same time. The comprehensive ebook is only $29, so it won’t break the bank. Makes a great side business, especially if you have some spare time during the day. It’s unlikely to replace your day job, but you can make some extra cash. And if you’re looking for creative business ideas, wood pallet furniture is only limited by your imagination.
Possible drawbacks: You will need a suitable vehicle and a reasonable degree of physical fitness for these recycling business ideas.
AustraLab Cosmetics & Detergent Manufacturing Business Idea
AustraLab : Cosmetics manufacturing and detergent manufacturing – which tops our list of profitable business ideas – is often considered the preserve of chemistry graduates and big corporations.
That’s what we thought, too – until we looked at AustraLab.
AustraLab is one of the most interesting and unique small business ideas we’ve seen in a while.
Click here to see for yourself what AustraLab is all about.
The concept: AustraLab is a “business-in-a-box” designed to provide all the information you need to start your own business making cosmetics, makeup, toiletries, cleaning products and detergents.
You can set up your own manufacturing workshop quite easily and inexpensively.
Again, contrary to our initial thoughts, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on machinery – you can use simple equipment for mixing your batches until you get yourself established – and you don’t need to know anything about chemistry.
The creator of the AustraLab program, Sam Stein, is an experienced chemical and cosmetic engineer and he provides in this program a comprehensive series of manuals which comprise:
- 100 professional quality formulations for makeup, cosmetics, skin care, hair care, toiletries and detergents
- Procedures manuals for the manufacturing process, including common sense safety procedures
- Marketing manuals with many good business ideas to help you sell your products
- Over 250 graphic designs for labeling your products (we fell in love with these designs – and we know they’re helping us to sell what we’ve made)
- A trademark license under the AustraLab brand name
The AustraLab trademark license is what really caught our attention – one of the most innovative, unique and profitable business ideas we have seen (and we look at a lot of business ideas!). Regardless of where in the world you reside, you can label your products “Made Under License From AustraLab Australia”. For someone just starting out in their own cosmetics company and/or detergent manufacturing business, we think this offers a great head start. It adds credibility to your operation and your products, and can give you an added edge of confidence. We think this brand has the potential for big sales on the international market – even Proctor&Gamble, one of the world’s biggest cosmetic and detergent manufacturers, produces a range of Australian label design hair care products, which makes them millions every year. (But we honestly think the AustraLab packaging is miles ahead.) P&G sure know profitable business ideas when they see them!
At SmallBusinessIdeas4u.com we’re in love with the AustraLab labels – we think this can save you a lot of time and expense and it will almost certainly make your products stand out on the shelf. Especially when you’re just starting out, graphic designers can cost an arm and a leg – so the savings here can be quite substantial (and save you a lot of time, too). As well as the trademark AustraLab label designs, there are also many generic designs. So, in addition to the AustraLab brand, you can create as many of your own brands as you like – just add your own brand name to the generic label design. This is how the big players in the industry make so much money – one factory, using the same equipment, staff, ingredients, etc can produce a multitude of different brands (and most consumers aren’t even aware they are buying from the same manufacturer).
Profitable Business Ideas – Our AustraLab Review Test-Drive:
After purchasing, within a matter of seconds we received a link to download the AustraLab manuals and designs.
We read through the AustraLab manufacturing procedures manuals – the information is comprehensive, but not overwhelming. We think it’s important to note here, that this program does not aim to teach you university level chemistry – and you don’t need to understand any complex scientific concepts in order to manufacture the AustraLab cosmetic and detergent products. In fact, we found the manufacturing process to be much easier than we expected. We like the fact that everything is written in plain language, no previous experience is assumed, and everything is easy to follow and understand, even if you were clueless in chemistry class.
After reading through the instructions, it was time to get ourselves set up for manufacturing. The AustraLab website advises that no fancy or expensive equipment is required – and we found what we needed at the local hardware store. When we get bigger orders, we will probably invest in some motorized equipment, but we’re doing just fine with this setup at the moment. (Update December 2012: Just clinched a BIG contract – some serious equipment on its way.)
It’s probably the right place to mention another reason why we like this program so much – you don’t need to spend money until you make money. In the manuals, Sam Stein recommends that when you begin your cosmetic manufacturing or detergent manufacturing business, that you only buy enough raw ingredients to make a sample range of products – there’s no need to buy barrel loads of ingredients until you actually have the orders for them. And you should always ask for a 50% deposit on every order, this way you can cover the costs of the order before you even start. We think this offers a major advantage over many other small business ideas, which require a large outlay of capital for stock and equipment.
So, we decided what products we wanted to start making first – we chose 2 makeup formulations, 2 skin care formulations and 2 hair care formulations, plus 6 of the household cleaning products.
Using the suppliers and resources directory in the AustraLab manuals, we purchased enough raw ingredients to make a few bottles of each of these products. Because most of the products comprise about 60-70% water, the actual amount of ingredients that we needed was very small. The total cost was less than $30. It probably should have been a few dollars more than this, but one of the supply companies we contacted was very obliging and gave us some sample ingredients free of charge.
We found the manufacturing process quick and easy – it’s important to make sure you measure everything correctly as you go. It’s also imperative that you add the ingredients exactly in the order they are listed – don’t go getting creative with the actual manufacturing procedures – you can save your artistic touch for adding the pigment dyes and fragrances. This is the part we really like about the AustraLab formulations – you can add just about any color pigments and scents that you like, so you can create an absolutely endless number of different combinations of products. This means you can sell your cosmetics and detergents to an endless number of different markets and customers.
We were very impressed with the quality of the samples we made – we really couldn’t notice any difference between what we manufactured compared to what we buy from department stores/drugstores/supermarkets, etc. Another aspect we really like – the AustraLab manuals tell you how you can use exactly the same scents that are used in some really well known high profile brands, and they’re not expensive (and it’s quite legal!).
The AustraLab program promises profits of around 500-1000% or even more (we don’t come across many profitable business ideas, so we were interested to see how this measured up after making our own samples. We had heard that this industry operates on very high profit margins, and our own research supported this – but we never realized quite how much until we tried it out for ourselves. We thought it might be difficult for beginners to make big profits – but we’re happy to admit we were wrong about that! We estimate that we could make a mark-up of at least five times greater than the manufacturing cost, and with some products it could be closer to thirty times. We knew that companies like P&G and L’Oreal make some really huge profits, and turn over tens of billions of dollars every year, now we know why.
We’re in the process of making a few more samples and securing our first orders now – the AustraLab marketing manuals gave us some great ideas to get started, and we have a couple of our own, too. We’ll keep you posted of our progress, but we’re sure we’re on a winner with this one.
The AustraLab program costs $1997 – it works out to $19.97 for each of the formulations, along with the trademark license, designs and manuals. We think it’s great value for a business which offers a very high return, has virtually no competition among small businesses, offers unique information, and doesn’t need a big investment for equipment and supplies. Before investing in AustraLab, we did a bit of research to see what it would cost to buy an established cosmetic manufacturing or detergent manufacturing business – we were staggered at what it costs to get into this industry even at basic entry level. We’re quite confident that with this program, we can build a very profitable business – at a tiny fraction of what it would cost to buy an established company. We read an article on the AustraLab blog (Link) about some young Kenyans who started their own cosmetics company manufacturing skin lotion – and they now have a business worth almost $1 million !!! If they can do it, we sure as heck can, too !!!
This would also make a great side business, as you could easily run this in your spare time from home or a workshop/garage. If you have an existing business, there are many avenues for producing and selling your own line of cosmetics, toiletries or detergents and cleaning products.
At SmallBusinessIdeas4u.com, our problem is not that we can’t find enough avenues for selling products – we can think of so many, that we were not quite sure where to start! We should add here that we sought the advice of the program’s creator, Sam Stein, to ask him his suggestions of what direction we should take. His reply gave us some great advice and it’s obvious he really knows the ins and outs of this industry.
There’s a really interesting post on the AustraLab blog – it examines the essential ingredients of creating a successful long-term high profit business. We can’t say it better ourselves – and we think it pretty much sums up why we like this business idea as much as we do – you can read it here.
The AustraLab program gets the SmallBusinessIdeas4u.com Seal of Approval. It wins our vote as one of the most unique and most profitable business ideas!
You can check it out for yourself here www.australab.com
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[wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]Cosmetics Manufacturing Business
Start your own cosmetics manufacturing and detergent manufacturing business.
This is this one of the most unique business ideas we’ve found – and we like it even more because it’s virtually recession-proof.
Start your own manufacturing venture – make makeup, cosmetics, toiletries, detergents and cleaning products.
It’s a low cost business idea with the potential to make you some very handsome profits.
Read our review … [/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]Online Travel Business – Up, Up & Away …
You can start your own online travel business.
Find a niche – from cruises to gourmet travel to textile tours – and you’re on your way to starting a great home-based business.
This is a multi-billion dollar industry, and there are lots of opportunities for smaller online travel operators in specialized markets.
This course provides multiple business models and plenty of ideas to get you started.
Read our review … [/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]How To Start A Preschool – For Fun & Profits
If you like children and want to work from home, starting a preschool can be fun and profitable.
We like this program – it’s one of our best business ideas for women. It offers everything from preschool curriculum to preschool games – plus organization and marketing.
If you’re a mom looking for a way to stay at home with your children and make some money at the same time, this rates among the best home-based small business ideas.
Read our review … [/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]
Hot Dog Cart Business – It Sucks
Starting a hot dog cart business? Steer clear of this report – we don’t like it, and we’re not afraid to say it!
At SmallBusinessIdeas4u, our team couldn’t make any sense of this program or the publishing company behind it.
We’re undecided about the value of starting a hot dog business – we’re working on it.
In the meantime, you can see why this rates as one of our Worst Small Business Ideas programs.
Read our review … [/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]
Business Credit – How To Get It Fast
Business credit – most small businesses need it, but how do you get it without a personal guarantee?
Business credit is vital for growth and development – when you know how, it can be a quick, easy and painless process.
We like this guide – the author’s credentials are among the best and if you follow through on the advice, we think you won’t fail to succeed in securing a business credit card.
Read our review … [/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]
Christmas Light Installation Business
It’s mostly seasonal, but the Christmas light installation business can make you some nice holiday spending money – and even much more.
There’s also potential for year-round business – installing lights for special occasions, including weddings, birthdays, etc.
Installing christmas lights is a great side business idea for anyone in related industries – landscaping, painting, home maintenance, event management, etc.
Read our review … [/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]
Medical Transportation Business
A non-emergency medical transportation business provides a much-needed service to the community and is an opportunity to start small and grow as you go.
You don’t need medical skills – just a driver’s license. This business transports the elderly, disabled and injured to medical appointments, therapy, hospitals, etc.
There’s also plenty of work from the insurance and compensations industries.
Read our review … [/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]
Business Ideas – Wood Pallets Recycling
For this small business idea, you’ll need a truck or van and a pair of thick gloves, but there’s plenty of work and good profits to be made – and you’ll be helping the environment.
Recycling wood pallets is big business – and the startup cost is minimal. You can even start an innovative furniture business.
This opportunity is mostly geared to those in the US, but could apply in many other countries.
Read our review … [/wpcol_1third] [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]
Mobile Business Ideas – Massage Therapy
If you’re a massage or bodywork therapist, starting your own mobile business can substantially reduce your overheads and increase your customer-base, while providing you with greater freedom.
Going mobile is a concept many therapists would like to try – but don’t know where to start.
This guide provides a complete business plan to help you get started – and organized – in your mobile massage business.
Read our review … [wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””][/wpcol_1third]