Outside of running an eBay business during college and doing a bunch of computer consulting I got nothing

7/21/2014 9:34:29 PM

Started an LLC to do programming for a niche device, did 1 job and realized this was nearly impossible to manage working a full-time job. Let in languish, being content knowing how easy the legal process is of starting a business, and how simple the taxes would have been for this type of company.

I could have quit my job and most likely made way more money, but with less free time and stability.

7/21/2014 10:03:53 PM

i whored myself out to tww hauling folks' shit, doing their yardwork, etc. it put some disposable income in my pocket, i met some cool folks, and it gave me something to do with some free time.

i have one yard besides my own that i cut on the side now. wouldn't mind picking up a few more.

7/21/2014 10:04:47 PM

Pre-paid legal
College Works Painting

I'm never doing sales again.

7/22/2014 9:15:11 AM

silent partner at a company that developed an app and database for customer support in a specific industry, doesn't make much money yet but I put very little of my money into it. i'm talking to someone now about partnering to buy a commercial property, i'm working now to determine how much risk i can afford.

7/22/2014 9:24:24 AM

When I was in high school I was the first kid with a CD burner. Started off making a hip-hop mix CD then an alternative rock CD. Made labels and covers for them, sold them at $10 a pop and made a shit-ton of money. Then went into custom CDs (you give me a list, I made the CD). Charged $12 a pop for those. As more kids got CD-burners and I developed a bigger music library, my CD prices dropped to $7 and finally $5. By my junior year I was just making CDs for the poor kids who didn't have computers and/or burners.

Now I have my own law firm and I'm a partner in a restaurant that's doing pretty well. I've been looking into investment real estate, partnering with a law school friend, but the market is completely saturated with people doing the same down here...so we've yet to pop our cherry. Personally the wife and I are looking at buying a bigger house and I'm going to keep the smaller house and rent it out. So maybe that will be my first experience and we can go on from there. Just have too many friends making money from it down here that I feel like I'm wasting opportunities not getting into it.

That's it for now. I'd like to build on the restaurant investment. The first one is doing so well that we have had people approach us into opening up other spots with the same concept. I'd like to build the reputation with this one a little longer and make more money off of it before we jump into another one. I don't love the practice of law...so the goal is to diversify and just keep it as a side gig to help out friends and family and the occasional personal injury case.

7/22/2014 9:51:45 AM

in high school I did double duty, ran a computer repair "business" (fixing old folks stuff out in the country for easy money, mostly needed antivirus) and mowed lawns for spare cash. paid decently and kept me from having to sling burgers or some other shitty summer job

now I run a video game reselling operation in my free time; get vintage games and systems on the cheap, clean them up, resell for a profit. get to keep some of the nicer finds/deals for myself too.

7/22/2014 11:10:30 AM

I write resumes for people on the side, specializing in federal/military resumes.

I've also been known to flip items on craigslist (watercraft, appliances, etc.)

7/22/2014 11:20:37 AM

in college i made a bunch of fake personal ads (as women) and sent people who responded to several porn sites that gave a percentage of sign-up money to and to all-advantage. I made a few hundred bucks a month for a while

[Edited on July 22, 2014 at 1:12 PM. Reason : ]

7/22/2014 1:11:53 PM

I cleaned some houses at one time.

7/22/2014 2:44:11 PM

I don't know that these are really entrepreneurial so much as "side-job" but my wife has done a lot of freelance copy-editing and writing over the years. I've done website development in the past (quite a bit in HS) and even some spreadsheet development at times oddly enough. I am really itching to get into more local interior design partnered with an Architect but have not found time to make that happen.

7/22/2014 3:00:53 PM

in college i started a "Y2K consulting" gig, which landed me a contract with the Dept of Forest services to update all of their PCs for Y2k... which essentially meant I built them a whole bunch of new PCs for which I made about $300 profit per machine. I had enough business to not have to seek out any other customers.

It was a nice gig back then, I probably netted about $200k over a 3 year period, which I blew through like an idiot, but I had fun.

7/25/2014 11:26:59 AM

I started a pub trivia company in 2008. I have 3 hosts that work for me on a 1099 contract basis.

7/25/2014 11:56:51 AM

Sold some stuff on ebay, but that was hardly entrepreneurial. Just getting rid of stuff I didn't want. And when I was in middle school I'd download music and then sell burned CDs for like $2 or $3. But I didn't charge my friends anything. I'd only charge if it was somebody I wasn't friends with. I probably made like $10-$12 tops.

7/25/2014 9:13:22 PM

I am a penny shopper/couponer....

When stores inventoried out their items, I try to grab it before the employees can and I sell it. Last fall I did a coupon deal that got me $88 pair of jeans for 1.58-2.50. Cleaned out every store in the Triangle and 4 other stores I could drive to in day. Sold to them to Clothing Mentors and Plato's Closets around the state and they paid me around 9-13/pr.

7/25/2014 11:04:36 PM

I thought this was pretty interesting...

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-i-made-10-million-and-blew-it-2014-9

9/26/2014 11:02:53 AM

^^How do you get the scoop or is it just a searching clearance racks while you are out kinda thing?

9/26/2014 12:22:05 PM

- I used to manage college bookstores back in the day. I'd write software to help me manage my inventory better, import data from online course catalogs into our system, project order quantities based on past sales/enrollments vs current enrollments, automate price and inventory comparisons with competitors. Over time my work got a reputation and I ended up selling it to about 20 other bookstore managers
- operated a small business specializing in providing online community for NCSU students and alumni
- co-founder of a 6 person software development consulting group
- currently working with a startup http://vidcode.io which is developing a platform for teaching teenage girls computer programming by customizing video filters with their own code. we won 1st place at Startup Weekend EDU in NYC earlier this year, and the two founders have been working on it nearly full time since, including participating in a startup accelerator over the summer. we currently have a kickstarter campaign as well

9/26/2014 10:19:26 PM

Quote :

"How do you get the scoop or is it just a searching clearance racks while you are out kinda thing?"

I can only imagine she's not gonna answer this one

4/28/2015 9:54:31 PM

^^cool stuff

4/28/2015 10:31:08 PM

I've really been racking my brain to think of something I could do on the side and maybe one day replace my day job. I'm currently in a technical sales type role for large HVAC equipment, so I haven't found a way for those skills to translate.

A lot of the passive income stuff I've read revolve around building a following/blog and then transition to online coaching. It seems like there is a huge push for the online coaching market on just about every topic imaginable. A bit overwhelming if you just get stuck in the analysis paralysis stage on trying to figure out what to do.

6/2/2016 6:15:42 AM