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Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?

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CatalinaWOW:
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.

AndyC_772:
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.

station240:

--- Quote from: DTJ on October 29, 2018, 06:46:31 am ---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.
--- End quote ---

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.

xaxaxa:
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.

trophosphere:
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.

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