Budding Entrepreneurs - Personal Assistant - A Low Cost Businesses to Start in a Recession

May 20, 2010 - PRLog -- It's a recession and you have lost your job or you just have that entrepreneurial spirit and want to start a business. You don't have much money and in these awful times a business loan is out of the question, so what kind of business can you start? Well here are some business ideas that have very low start up costs, but have the potential to make you enough money to live off of.

In recessionary times, those that have a job are keen to keep it. They are probably being asked to work longer hours and they will certainly be more stressed. Longer working hours means that there is not time to do some things. These might be small things like shopping or bigger things like walking the dog, feeding the cats or even looking after the children after school. Here is where you come in. Market yourself as a personal assistant, willing to step in and help out with these tasks.

First of all decide if you want to charge by the hour of the task. Remember that times are hard, so don't make our costs too high. The object here is to get lots of work at a fair price that is repeated every week or month. This will be better for you than an occasional one off job at a higher price. Here is an idea of the type of assistance you can offer:

o   Light cleaning
o   Shopping
o   Baby sitting
o   Ironing
o   Dog walking
o   House sitting
o   Pet feeding
o   House organisation
o   Picking up dry cleaning
o   Collection packages/Mailing packages
o   Light gardening/clearing the yard
o   Ferrying children to/from clubs, sports, shows, parties etc.

So how do you start up this kind of business? Get together some flyers and a brochure. Both of these you can do on Word or similar. They need not be glossy, just professional looking. You can set a brochure up by folding an A4/Letter page in half. You design it in landscape using 2 columns then print it on both pages. Don't forget to put on your contact details on both of them.

Take your flyers round such areas as the school gate, the supermarket, relevant notice boards etc. Always get permission to post your flyers. Put a small classified ad in your local paper or your local free ad papers. Contact your local paper about your new service and see if they would like to write about you. If you are able to write a press release then send this off to relevant papers. Contact your local radio and let them know about you as well.

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