Earning Money

In college it’s not incredibly easy to make money. We’ve talked about making money online as well as selling your old belongings. But if you’re not Internet-inclined or you run out of things to sell, what are you going to do? Well this is the time where you need to rely on your talents. What do I mean by talents? Let me explain.

Are you a girl who is absolutely fastidious about her manicure? Do you know how to give one? Consider offering $10 manicures to the girls in your dorm. Most girls can’t get away from campus and would love to have someone focus on working on their appearance. Guys, do you know how to use a hair trimmer? One of my family members paid for his books each semester by cutting hair. Again, a lot of students can’t get away from campus and are more than willing to pay $5-10 for a haircut.

What do I do? Well actually this next semester my plan is do henna tattoos. Now if you’re familiar with henna (mehndi) it is a herb that when painted onto the skin, tints the layers of dead skin cells. It’s highly well tolerated, does not involve any pain whatsoever, and does not enter the bloodstream with unknown chemicals. Since I am artistically inclined, I will print out a book of designs that I know I can do, as well as bring several cones of prepared paste that I did at home. Henna tattoos usually cost $5 per square inch at popular venues. However, since the herb actually only costs me $2.00 for 100 grams and would easily cover 5 large designs, I would only charge $3.00 per square inch. Again, the profit is still very respectable. If you are interested in learning more about henna, I suggest you do a lot of research on the best techniques as well as tricks of the trade. It is a very cool way to make money if you are talented with art.

So take a moment and think of your talents. If nothing else, consider cleaning dorms for money. If you aren’t artistic, you can’t play music, you don’t know how to cook or cut hair or anything of that nature, you can run a vacuum. A single dorm room might earn you $20-$50 dollars. Remember, it’s not easy to make money in college but it’s not impossible.

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Believe it or not, there is a lot of money to be made in landscaping. And it’s an easy job if you’re good at it. It’s manual labor, but think of it this way…If you’re like me and could lose a couple of pounds, what’s better than mowing people’s lawns, cutting their hedges, clearing branches out of the backyard to get rid of those few pounds? And the work is not that difficult. But, this blog isn’t a self-help blog to motivate you to lose weight. My opinion on that is if you want to do it, you’ll do it; if you don’t, you won’t. This blog is about making money. You want Benjamin Franklins. And I want to do everything I can to help you get that.

One of the first things that you need to try and do is get the necessary tools. Naturally, I recommend a lawnmower. The size does not matter, but if you can get a tractor, that mows more lawn in half the time and since the day is only so long, the more lawn you can cut in half the time, the better it is. I recommend getting a weed whacker because that’ll take care of what a lot of people hate most about their lawns: the outer edges that grow in and look ugly as hell. Get some hedge clippers to try and even them out and make them look relatively presentable. Put it this way…Anything you can get for inexpensive that’ll help you ‘expand’ is important.

The difficult thing that people forget about this type of business is they don’t keep records. Basically, if they bring in five hundred dollars in one day, they’ll just pocket all of that money and call it a day. This is the wrong way to do business. When you run a business, you want to take a salary for yourself and that’s that. Ensure that the rest of the money is going into a bank account of sorts. What do you do if your lawn mower breaks and you have no money saved up to get a new one? Your business dies. You need to have money for accidents and that’s what a lot of business people forget to do. If you expect things to happen, you’ll be prepared for when they do.

The final thing I want to touch on is hiring people. I’ve seen people start up a landscaping company and then hire five or six people because their mentality is, “if I hire a lot, I can get more work done.” This is true. However, you need a lot of work for that to really be of any benefit for you. If you’re getting one or two projects a day, do it by yourself, don’t hire a single person. However, if you’re starting to get ten or fifteen projects a day, it’s time to get some staff. Hire people you can depend on, not people that you like. It’s business, you don’t need to like the person…You need to work well with them. Get people that’ll work and you’ll see your money will be well spent.

Starting this type of a business is difficult because it is manual labor. However, keep in mind one thing that my friend once taught me. When someone is lazy, you can reap the riches. People are lazy in this world and to spend forty bucks to get their lawn mowed is nothing if they don’t have to do it. You’ll be surprised the money you can make simply because other people are lazy as hell. Benefit from their misfortunes. If they want to pay someone to mow their lawn, BE that person. Take a chunk of the market. It’s the perfect time, especially since its summer. Good luck.

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