Start a Community Directory
Here is a great work at home idea that nobody is actively
engaged in as a direct money making business, but rather I have
noticed that this idea is being worked, and vary sparsely, by
real estate agents who are disguising their community directory
as a "service to the community". Their real motive is to drive
business back to themselves by having a directory with their
picture and name on the front and back cover in each house of
that particular neighborhood.
This is how it works, you find a smallish community or
sub-division, 150-houses will work just fine. You prepare a
short letter that informs the community that you are preparing a
directory for the community, which will serve as the
neighborhood phone book and resource. You will mail this letter
to all the residents' homes along with a questionnaire that asks
some applicable information to be included in the directory:
* Names of Parents * Names of Children * Address * Phone Number
* Whether any of the children do any part-time jobs, if yes,
which one and when available.
Include an envelope addressed back to yourself, but without
postage since you do not know which residents will return the
questionnaire.
While you are waiting for the residents' information to be
returned back to you, you need to call, write or visit real
estate agents, brokers, doctors and dentist offices informing
them that you are putting together the community directory and
that you can sell them the exclusive rights to the directory.
For a fee, you will include on the front and back covers of the
directory their business information and picture if so desired.
You will find a taker if someone knows that they can be a
prominent fixture in the house all year around. You can follow
this same routing the following year in order to capture all of
the new residents who have moved into the community. This also
serves as a good excuse to build a continuous income stream.
So how much money can you make? Well, let us take our 150-house
example. Postage will cost you roughly $55 to mail out all your
letters and questionnaires to the neighbors. You can design a
price-scaling schedule, but to have exclusive rights to a
neighborhood a business should be willing to pay you at least
$200. Not counting your time and effort, from a monetary
standpoint you could make an easy $145 for each neighborhood of
this size. The objective here is to become the person that
"owns" this neighborhood. Once you are in, others will not feel
as comfortable trying to get in. A word of caution you should
inform the businesses that purchase advertising that they are
exclusive under your program, but there is nothing stopping
others from doing the same business and giving another business
the same exposure to the residents that you gave to them.