Ask HN: What kind of profitable business you can create with only $10K USD? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What kind of profitable business you can create with only $10K USD?

17 pointsdesignium23 comments

Lawn care business or cleaning business are the first ones that come to mind. Both have a relatively low barrier of entry. I was able to create a lawn care business for under $10k in upfront investment, and that means absolutely everything: marketing, website, pickup truck, covered trailer, mower, all misc tools. I did everything myself. Cleaning business has far less upfront cost and doesn't require as much hot outdoors work.

I've heard Dave Ramsey refer to coin car wash lots as a license to print money, but he also said he doesn't own any b/c it's not what he wants to get into. I never did research that claim, and I don't know how much money it would require but I'm guessing more than 10k.

How profitable are they?

Are you asking me how profitable lawn care or cleaning businesses are? It will depend on your market, but locally the good lawn care businesses (ie they have proper insurance, good customer service, and do a good job) charge roughly $60/hour. They never charge by the hour, I'm not sure why, but it's $60/hour. Cleaning businesses in my area, which I haven't done as much research on, but the good ones charge somewhere in the $35-45/hour range. There are different kinds of cleaning, you have residential, commercial, and new construction (maybe other types too, I'm not sure), and each of those are different.

So, "profitable" depends on what your market will pay minus your overhead. Lawn care has a much higher overhead (though still relatively low overheard) than cleaning, but in my market at least (and I imagine pretty much all markets) lawn care can charge more.

Coin laundromats def are

Tell me more. I kinda tried to research this years ago and didn't get very far, but also didn't try very hard. Can you point me to any resources outlining typical ROIs?

Check out investment joy on YouTube. He is very transparent on costs and revenue. It's not a huge profit center, but with tax incentives, write offs, vending machines and a quarter pusher he makes a profit.

He is upfront on how he makes a lot more money via the YouTube channel talking about running a coin laundry them from the laundry business itself.

If you go through his videos, he talks about the risks he is taking, other business ventures he has in real estate, it's interesting. This guy is running Landry mats and trailer parks in the midwest. Its not the normal Instagram get rich quick lifestyle blog.

https://youtu.be/Wzrn9tvPI14

Pressure cleaning can be thrown into this mix, although you can screw things up with too much pressure, so study up a bit before you start.

Could start for about 3k including a decent pickup truck.

Not bad ideas. It reminds some suggestions from r/sweatstartups Thanks.

One trick with this is to try to do it with as close to $0 as possible. Many apps fall into this category. Use the money for experiments, or to speed up things like data entry. Maybe for marketing or setting up a domain name.

And by trying to stick to $0, you tend to spot clever low cost marketing strategies that might actually be far more effective than putting $1000 on a Facebook ad. And you end up focusing on trying to get users right now rather than think in terms of runway, assets, and bloated features.

For example, we'd print out recipes and put them on some banners downtown, with link to our app for more.

Or we'd set up a fake blog and subscribe a domain name, with a single article that said "If You Are (target market), Here Are 5 Reasons You Must Download This App." It's shady but it brought in 3000 active users, who stuck around and shared it to their friends. The cost for that was around $100, including hiring a copywriter.

If you don't like apps, there's always something like dropshipping - be a middle man for two parties and make money off the arbitrage (which ironically scales well into an app). Some friends make a good sum collecting money for babysitters. One friend did a car rental business, but he got the cash up front first, then bought the car. Try to make it cost $0 where possible.

Thanks for the advice! I think the "free" marketing is where I'm struggling the most.

First, I will suggest reading $100 startup.

What skills do you have? Based on your skills, find low hanging fruits and go for them. No need to think too much or do any validation etc. Take a shotgun approach. Launch bunch of small projects and see what sticks.

Can you do WordPress? Can you learn quickly? Join affiliate programs and launch bunch of sites in obscure topics you know and/or interested in. Outsource writing to Fiverr, Upwork etc freelance sites.

I"m going to read that book. I didn't know it.

I have a full time job as a PM in a Fintech startup. It's not bad but I really want to have my own thing and be job independent. I can also program in Ruby on Rails and do a lot of automation scripts.

The issue is that I have too many ideas and that's more of a distraction than anything else. I think creating is not an issue but marketing what I want and to whom is the bigger issue.

Too many ideas are a good kind of problem. If you can’t decide, throw a dart and pick one. Low hanging fruits picked at low cost is the key.

If you like creating, just create. Don’t worry about marketing. Overtime, you will figure out.

If you start with certain Return expectations, and then don’t get close to those expectations you will be disappointed. Just don’t have any expectations. Just create. Do for the fun of creating.

Since you are in fintech, any thoughts on selling and buying options using the Wheel strategy?

For those that don’t know, go to the thetagang subreddit.

I haven’t done anything yet. Still studying.

a tiling business, assuming you like working with your hands and care about doing things well

Sell coronavirus masks

sneaker reselling

I would personally feel bad ripping off kids who almost certainly couldn't actually afford the things they were buying from me. If you could overlook the ethical part of this suggestion then I guess it's easy money.

the key here is that in the internet market it's usually their parents doing the affording, but yeah you're mostly right.

Prostitution? Drugs?

Oh, I'm guessing you mean legally. Didn't see that in the requirement specs though.

I guess I should have added /sarcasm to avoid the downvote.

I didn't downvote you. I think those are some of the thoughts I had as a joke; like running a onlyfans site, etc. but I'm not sure if that's sustainable or it can scale. Nor if I have the "talent".

I wish I was talented at anything.

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