Author Topic: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?  (Read 10779 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline mikeselectricstuff

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 14117
  • Country: gb
    • Mike's Electric Stuff
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #25 on: October 30, 2018, 02:20:18 pm »

The best thing to do is:

1. Perform a service. This requires nothing tangible and no stock.
But it does require that you be there most/all of the time, and can cause significant scheduling issues once you get multiple customers.

A nice thing about a successful product is it earns money when you're not doing anything.
 
Youtube channel:Taking wierd stuff apart. Very apart.
Mike's Electric Stuff: High voltage, vintage electronics etc.
Day Job: Mostly LEDs
 
The following users thanked this post: pardo-bsso

Offline bd139

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 23099
  • Country: gb
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #26 on: October 30, 2018, 02:22:42 pm »
You need multiple customers here at least. IR35  >:(
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #27 on: October 30, 2018, 02:27:43 pm »
Oftentimes some industry has evolved in a high margin environment and pricing is totally disproportionate to costs but all the major manufacturers have simply found there is so little competition that somebody can come in and even if they make the product by hand, undercut the commercial products by some huge margin, and offer equivalent or better quality, they can succeed and even thrive, but their volume will likely be low because they just dont have the capital.
The drawback is, once you go into business, eventually the big players may just lower their prices (or buy you out, or just ignore you and count on your lack of advertising resources to limit your sales.) Or somebody with even lower costs, may copy your product and sell it for even less.

Except in the last case (which is probably the most likely, unfortunately) there may still be the space in the market for you to operate and make a profit as long as you want.

Maybe you will be able to expand it too.

The key is finding a niche market.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Online coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 10035
  • Country: gb
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #28 on: October 30, 2018, 02:36:17 pm »
A huge problem for many people starting up on their own is they start because they have had a good idea for a product or service - just one good idea. That idea may fail from day one. If it succeeds it won't remain successful forever. Once you have gone your own way, it can be hard to get back into well paid employment. So, keep focussed on what you are doing, or its doomed to failure, but always make some time to consider what you do next.
 

Offline AndyC_772

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4315
  • Country: gb
  • Professional design engineer
    • Cawte Engineering | Reliable Electronics
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #29 on: October 30, 2018, 02:48:10 pm »
I wouldn't be too concerned about that; after all, every company has a first product.

If it's a success, then that's great.

If not, then:

- *accept* that it wasn't a success. Don't go throwing good money after bad.
- try to figure out why it wasn't a success. (Hint: it probably wasn't the technical details of the product)
- make a new product which is more commercially viable than the first one.

The new product doesn't have to be objectively "better"; it needs to be a closer fit for the needs of a particular group of customers. That could mean simpler, cheaper, easier to use and understand, and NOT having more features, better accuracy, or whatever.

Offline mikeselectricstuff

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 14117
  • Country: gb
    • Mike's Electric Stuff
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #30 on: October 30, 2018, 03:30:59 pm »
You need multiple customers here at least. IR35  >:(
Not necessarily - AIUI if you have your own equipment etc. and can in principle take work from anyone you don't come under IR35.
Youtube channel:Taking wierd stuff apart. Very apart.
Mike's Electric Stuff: High voltage, vintage electronics etc.
Day Job: Mostly LEDs
 

Offline bd139

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 23099
  • Country: gb
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #31 on: October 30, 2018, 03:32:53 pm »
Depends if it’s a good or bad day at HMRC. Had the latter before.
 

Offline TERRA Operative

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3169
  • Country: jp
  • Voider of warranties
    • Near Far Media Youtube
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #32 on: October 30, 2018, 04:27:52 pm »

I wondered if anyone did automotive electronics work. I imagine there might be a good side business in repairing some dash board instrument clusters.

Did you have to rig up a full test system for the ECUs?

Nah, nothing so fancy. The problems with these ECU's were 99.9% leaky capacitors. I never had one not work after a cap replacement, and sometimes a PCB trace repair.

Gauge clusters would be easier to make a jig for I reckon, just feed in a signal from a sig gen for speed and tacho, and variable voltages for other gauges, assuming it's not all canbus...
Where does all this test equipment keep coming from?!?

https://www.youtube.com/NearFarMedia/
 
The following users thanked this post: DTJ

Offline Red Squirrel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2757
  • Country: ca
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #33 on: October 30, 2018, 04:36:35 pm »
This is something I've briefly pondered.  With costs of living (hydro, gas, city taxes etc) constantly going up, I'd like to eventually buy cheap land in an unorganized townshp (less/no bylaws = more freedom) and live mostly off grid so I'm not so much at the mercy of those costs.  From there I could find a hobby that could generate income.  Since cost of living would be cheap it would not need to be that much income, but enough to pay for the few things I may want like internet, and rest would just go to savings to pay for one time purchases like house upgrades etc.

I'm thinking an easy route might be wood working, if you get decent at it you can build some commodity items that people will buy at a decent price.  Things like crates maybe even skids.  Furniture if you get really good.  Not exactly electronics but could do that too.  With a decent size off grid property and nice shop the possibilities are greater.
 

Offline tpowell1830

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 863
  • Country: us
  • Peacefully retired from industry, active in life
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #34 on: October 30, 2018, 05:11:39 pm »
Seems like a number of us are looking for a semi-retirement small business. I wonder what a consortium of service type businesses would look like, something like an exchange, where we had a website and private forum that we could all use to share small jobs. For example, if I had a small TV repair service and ran into a customer who needed a small microcontroller done for a project, I could pass it on the the exchange for someone else. Or, a project for the European area, for example, that couldn't practically be done in the US, I could post the link in exchange for a European member to consider.

My thoughts are not real clear on how this exchange could work, but we could call for help with projects that are stumping us as well and get free help on the exchange.

Help me out here to define this exchange idea, how else could it work to help a small business? Small businesses are the least to get help from any source, maybe even some kind of financial help for small capital expenses, say for a specific piece of equipment? Any thoughts?

It is very difficult to scratch start a small business and there aren't many resources where you can easily get help. How can a consortium/exchange be modeled so that the small business person at least has other small businesses as resources? Knowledge base, source base, there a number of ways it would be beneficial.
PEACE===>T
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5571
  • Country: us
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #35 on: October 30, 2018, 05:20:12 pm »
If you look at the original requirements the goals are pretty tough.  Any small business is tough, and one that requires only a few hours a week is even tougher.

What some have morphed this to is something that generates a small supplemental income, perhaps for retirement.  Much easier.  Failure isn't life changing and dry periods can be waited out.  Everything I have seen says that automotive electronics might be a sweet spot for this.  It is black magic to most of those in the car business, but is more and more of the content and function of cars.  I have a few friends who have dabbled in this, forming relationships with local service shops and consulting on the tough problems.  The hardest part of this is reconciling your desire for an on demand/few hours a week occupation with the service industries need to get it done NOW. 

For those so inclined at home IT type work is always there.  At least for the next few decades there will be tons of folks who are clueless.
 

Offline AndyC_772

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4315
  • Country: gb
  • Professional design engineer
    • Cawte Engineering | Reliable Electronics
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #36 on: October 30, 2018, 05:30:03 pm »
I'm not sure how practical it ever is to try and only work a couple of days a week. Anyone who wants a job done typically wants it done to a reasonable time scale; you'll find it much easier to work (say) a couple of weeks a month, on average, rather than a couple of days a week.

I do know people who work part time as consultants, though, but they have very specific skills and experience which are called for sporadically. It's nice work if you can get it, but in order to end up in that position, you really need to be able to do something special.

Offline station240

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 967
  • Country: au
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #37 on: October 30, 2018, 05:38:50 pm »
What ideas do we all have for a small cottage or home based electronics related business?

Perhaps something that would generate a few hundred dollars per week for a day or two's work.
  • Design a widget, build it and sell it - depends on if you can come up with an in-demand saleable product.
  • Consumer electronics repair -  unless it's a niche product that you have experience with eg hi end audio amplifiers or musicians effects pedals I wonder about the viability of this.
  • Prototype hardware construction - limited demand.

Done the second one, got given a ton of equipment fixed most of it, kept what I wanted, sold the rest on ebay.
Downside it was specialized, you couldn't rely on something selling in a certain timeframe to be income, it was worth the trouble when it did.

Currently doing the third for someone I consider a friend, one off product. I help them anyway, they are providing parts/support.
Was going to make something like it anyway, so it's all good Still no money out of it directly.

The first one, working on that also. Despite what many believe, there are still people out there for who made in China is too questionable in quality/design to be useful.


At the end of the day, you really need only to:
A) pick something you understand, not just technically but how and why
B) if there is no competition, find out if it's because others are fools, or simply as there isn't enough money in it.
C) if no one else understands how something works, or how to build/repair it, that's probably a good thing. Downside is you have no one to ask advice from.
D) reverse engineering other people's stuff to figure out how it works, should be an electronics 101 subject.
 

Offline xaxaxa

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 248
  • Country: ca
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #38 on: October 30, 2018, 06:22:39 pm »
First make sure you have enough cash in the bank to last you at least 2 years. More is better. Then quit your job (a normal job does not leave you enough time and energy to do any meaningful R&D). Then just do whatever you like for at least a few months; do as many projects as you can handle, and do projects that are fun whether or not they have business potential. Do make sure you employ modern techniques in electronics prototyping; that means proper PCBs and attention to mechanical construction.

When you have a few projects that make commercial sense, investigate the market, estimate your costs, and think about these things:
(1) Is there a need for this product? And why would people buy yours over the existing alternatives?
(2) Can I provide good value for the money? You need to account for at least a 2.5x profit multiplier over your costs. If your product has about the same price/performance as existing ones, you need to rethink your strategy.

Once you have evaluated your market, much of the art is in designing a product that is efficient and low cost to manufacture while providing high value. Unless you are targeting the ultra-high-end market you will need to put quite some effort into cost reduction. That can include looking into alternative architectures of your circuit, avoiding expensive parts when an alternate discrete solution will do, designing your board to fit into an off-the-shelf enclosure, integrating everything on a single PCB to avoid connectors and manual assembly, etc. Get into the habit of being constantly cost-conscious when designing a circuit. Component sourcing is important too; the higher priced parts (>=$2) will have huge margins from distributors and you can usually find far cheaper sources.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2018, 06:25:02 pm by xaxaxa »
 
The following users thanked this post: DTJ, pardo-bsso

Offline trophosphere

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 280
  • Country: us
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #39 on: October 31, 2018, 03:36:00 am »
One thing that is often overlooked is how much time will you be spending on making your widget especially if there is some amount of mechanical assembly required and you are at the point where you are getting plenty of orders in but not enough to justify (money-wise) hiring someone else to help. You could wind up stuck just making the same set of widgets while having little time to do anything else.
 

Offline DTJTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1013
  • Country: au
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #40 on: October 31, 2018, 03:48:41 am »



At the end of the day, you really need only to:
A) pick something you understand, not just technically but how and why
B) if there is no competition, find out if it's because others are fools, or simply as there isn't enough money in it.
C) if no one else understands how something works, or how to build/repair it, that's probably a good thing. Downside is you have no one to ask advice from.
D) reverse engineering other people's stuff to figure out how it works, should be an electronics 101 subject.

All very interesting points Station240.

Reverse engineering is also a lot of fun.
 

Offline Red Squirrel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2757
  • Country: ca
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #41 on: October 31, 2018, 04:09:07 pm »
The thing to watch out too is patents.  If you decide to make something that is not the first of it's kind, it might infringe on a patent then you get sued for millions and end up losing everything you have.  My fear would be losing my house/property.  They'll probably garnish your wages too if you have a job.  Basically you'd be paying for life.

I kinda want to design my own home automation system (I hate the fact that existing stuff is cloud based and proprietary) that is super modular with plug in cards etc and I was thinking I could release it to public, but there's probably too many patents related to that so not worth the risk.
 

Offline AndyC_772

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4315
  • Country: gb
  • Professional design engineer
    • Cawte Engineering | Reliable Electronics
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #42 on: October 31, 2018, 04:34:14 pm »
This is a good reason to work through a Ltd company, but not a reason to run screaming from any possible business opportunity.

There are some well established business practices that you'd do well to consider. For example, you might set up two companies:

- one is a holding company, which owns your intellectual property, and licences it out for a fee
- the other is a trading company, which makes and sells products. The designs for the products are licensed from the holding company.

Get it right, and the trading company's profits from selling widgets are balanced by its expenditure on license fees paid back to the holding company. Crucially, it has no assets of its own, so if it's sued for patent infringement, it can be wound up without incurring massive losses.

The holding company isn't making or selling any product, so it can't be guilty of patent infringement. Its assets are relatively safe in that respect. You own the shares in the holding company, and can take dividends from it.

The paperwork is a pain, and does have a cost associated with it, but it's a lot safer than being a sole trader.
 
The following users thanked this post: DTJ

Offline xaxaxa

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 248
  • Country: ca
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #43 on: October 31, 2018, 05:48:51 pm »
That's why when you are small it might make sense to do the whole thing from china
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #44 on: October 31, 2018, 06:51:13 pm »
Guess what renting a good IP lawyer's time will set you back here in the US, around $1200/hour.

 
The thing to watch out too is patents.  If you decide to make something that is not the first of it's kind, it might infringe on a patent then you get sued for millions and end up losing everything you have.  My fear would be losing my house/property.  They'll probably garnish your wages too if you have a job.  Basically you'd be paying for life.

I kinda want to design my own home automation system (I hate the fact that existing stuff is cloud based and proprietary) that is super modular with plug in cards etc and I was thinking I could release it to public, but there's probably too many patents related to that so not worth the risk.

Often they don't even know answers to questions (Although sometimes there is no answer to a question, yet, this applies to almost everything out of the ordinary, not just that.) and they want you to pay them for research time.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Brumby

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 12413
  • Country: au
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #45 on: November 01, 2018, 06:57:16 am »
Search "orgone" on ebay.

You made me look.   >:(

Don't look for forgiveness any time soon.
 
The following users thanked this post: pardo-bsso

Online Psi

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 10385
  • Country: nz
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #46 on: November 03, 2018, 09:42:21 am »
Couple more things i forgot to put in my list

- Pick an industry where people have more money than sense. Or at least an industry where it's normal for items to be a bit expensive. Even better if a % of your customers buy your product and never really use it.
Sometimes, if your product is known to be very good at what it does, people will buy it just to be part of the culture.
Happens a bit in automotive industry, if item X can be used to make a car go round the track faster then some people will buy it just to say that their car has it. And they wont even bother to fully install or actually use it.

- Don't try to compete with china on small cheap electronics.
if it's a low volume niche product you'll probably never need to worry about china clones
« Last Edit: November 03, 2018, 09:56:29 am by Psi »
Greek letter 'Psi' (not Pounds per Square Inch)
 

Offline bd139

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 23099
  • Country: gb
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #47 on: November 03, 2018, 09:46:17 am »
I don’t think more money than sense is required, just an abject lack of sense. They have credit cards, also due to lack of sense, to bridge the financial gap  :-DD
 

Offline DTJTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1013
  • Country: au
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #48 on: November 03, 2018, 11:20:54 am »
Couple more things i forgot to put in my list

- Pick an industry where people have more money than sense. Or at least an industry where it's normal for items to be a bit expensive. Even better if a % of your customers buy your product and never really use it.
Sometimes, if your product is known to be very good at what it does, people will buy it just to be part of the culture.
Happens a bit in automotive industry, if item X can be used to make a car go round the track faster then some people will buy it just to say that their car has it. And they wont even bother to fully install or actually use it.


Sectors where participants have more money than sense, what have we got......
  • Cars - young guys love to spend $$ on accessories. Especially rice burner guys.
  • Boats & boating.
  • Fishing accessories.
  • Maybe RV / camper-van accessories.
  • Security / surveillance systems maybe.
  • RC hobbies
  • Cheap electronics lab TEQ........
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 14117
  • Country: gb
    • Mike's Electric Stuff
Re: Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?
« Reply #49 on: November 03, 2018, 01:47:45 pm »
Couple more things i forgot to put in my list

- Pick an industry where people have more money than sense. Or at least an industry where it's normal for items to be a bit expensive. Even better if a % of your customers buy your product and never really use it.
Sometimes, if your product is known to be very good at what it does, people will buy it just to be part of the culture.
Happens a bit in automotive industry, if item X can be used to make a car go round the track faster then some people will buy it just to say that their car has it. And they wont even bother to fully install or actually use it.


Sectors where participants have more money than sense, what have we got......
  • Cars - young guys love to spend $$ on accessories. Especially rice burner guys.
  • Boats & boating.
  • Fishing accessories.
  • Maybe RV / camper-van accessories.
  • Security / surveillance systems maybe.
  • RC hobbies
  • Cheap electronics lab TEQ........
Audiophools
Woo-Woo
Guns/hunting ( in certain countries)
Youtube channel:Taking wierd stuff apart. Very apart.
Mike's Electric Stuff: High voltage, vintage electronics etc.
Day Job: Mostly LEDs
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf