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Lets be real. Nobody starts a business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings. That's where our partner Gusto comes in to take the stress out of payroll, benefits and HR so you can focus on why you started your business in the first place. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use. So that means you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. Talking about automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers comp 401k, you name it. Gusto makes it simple and all with no hidden fees, no surprises. Plus if you have any questions, their team of certified HR experts are standing by to help. It's no wonder why more than 400,000 small businesses already trust Gusto and why it's the number one rated payroll software for fall 2025 according to the review site G2. So try Gusto today at gusto.comsidehustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.comsidehUSTLE One more time Gusto G-U S T O.com Sidehustle 15 things you can buy on Amazon to make money what's up? What's up? Nickeloper here. Welcome to Side Hustle show because your 9 to 5 may make you a living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive. The holiday shopping season is upon us, but as you're making your list and checking it twice, I want to introduce some products you can buy and actually make money with. These are roughly in order from least expensive to most expensive and I'll do my best to share a little bit about the income potential and marketing strategy for each of them as well. First up is this $60 headlight restoration kit. It says it will easily remove oxidation from old faded headlights. It's rated 4.6 stars from over 60,000 reviews and comes in a professional detailer's 50 pack, which I think you could probably turn into $1,000 or more before you need to reorder. How would I market this? I would find busy parking lots, shopping centers, office parks. Leave flyers under the wiper blades. You could play up the safety card. Hey, make sure you can see better driving at night and make sure other cars can see you. Maybe include a couple before and after pictures on the flyer on the postcard. Charge, you know, $50 for a one time headlight restoration. Hey, we'll come to you. Maybe each job only takes a few minutes. You could probably stack up 10 or 15 of these on a Saturday could be a nice little side business. Second one is also car related. This is a $70 dent repair kit. PDR stands for paintless dent removal. So I've seen people charging 75 to $200 per dent for smaller dings, but could be as high as several hundred dollars for larger dents or even hail damage. And you could probably take a similar marketing strategy as the headlight restoration business, but maybe taking it one step farther in potentially striking up a partnership with the property management at the office park. So they advertise your service to the tenants in advance. Hey, on Wednesday, Nick's going to be coming by and he's going to do paintless dent repair while you work. Scan the QR code, put your name and your vehicle down on the list, reserve your time slot. And I would also get in touch with the car wash services, the used car lots, maybe even mobile detailers as potential strategic partners here if they don't already offer this service. That's number two, the paint or the paintless dent repair kit costs around $70 on Amazon. Number three is the $160 solar panel cleaning kit. It's a water fed pole and brush designed specifically for cleaning solar panels. Rated 4.7 stars. Extends to 36ft. So you can reach up high on the roof in this case. But a lot of these solar panel cleaning services charge $100 to $350 for a residential system. So the best way to market this is probably door to door because you can see the panels on the roof or maybe you have used Google Maps in advance so you can kind of get a sense of where is the where. Is there a high density of solar panel installations, but probably door to door you can offer on the spot service. Hey look, It'll take me 20 minutes. I'm here right now. You can find some data to support your pitch that hey Mr. And Mrs. Homeowner, did you know that cleaning your solar panels makes them 17% more efficient or whatever it is? So you know the service pays for itself in however many months. So I would also be sure to set up a Google business profile to start to collect reviews and then upload pictures from every job that you do. Because that was a recent tip from coach Dom Costa in his scrap metal recycling business. It's like, dude, I just post these pictures of me dumping the scrap metal and all of a sudden I'm like number two in LA for scrap metal recycling. So that's how I would market that business. Number four is this $80 window washing kit. It is rated 4.4 stars. It comes with a 24 foot extension pole so you can reach those second story windows without a ladder. And I actually kind of want to get one of this for my own second story windows. I don't know when the last time they've been watched is, but last year we talked to Jack Linebach. He was a college student at Auburn on landed window washing customers.
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For the first nine months, I would kind of just go up to somebody's house. I'd say, hey, my name's Jack with Tiger window Cleaning. Would you like your, your windows cleaned? And everybody obviously is like, no, because they have a hundred salespeople coming and knocking on their doors every day and they're just tired once you get off their lawn. Typically they're pretty mean about it. Then I just be like, okay, then move on to the next house. And obviously that didn't work out very good. But what these brothers were showing me is you try to make, you know, you try to throw in a joke. Like a lot of people have dogs barking when you knock the door and so they're kind of break the ice. I go, oh, are those the guard dogs? They're so ferocious. And 10 times out of 10 the homeowner will laugh and be like, oh yeah, they won't harm you. Like, wouldn't hurt a fly. And then I'd say, you know, have you seen this on the street? Handsome fellows in the blue shirts. And then they laughed about that too. And then after that, you know, you really built up a good reputation for yourself and they're about ready to buy from you rather than just some dude coming up asking if they want their windows cleaned.
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If you're trying to get the guard down, build a tiny bit of rapport. I remember doing the same thing, like, oh, you know, it would be a, you know, a tiny chihuahua or shih Tzu or something like, oh, is this the attack dog? Or you know, guard your ankles?
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Yeah, pretty much every window cleaner tiktoker uses it because it's such a good pitch and you know, you don't want to reinvent the wheel. It's already been perfected and it's definitely the best one. And when you compare it to a pitch just like, hey, my name is Jack with Tiger window Cleaning. It's not even, it's not even comparable and it's super demotivating. Knocking on doors for eight hours, not getting a single. You can't even call the single house because you can't even get to that point, right?
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Yeah. Forget your 150 bucks an hour. It's like, you know, now I have to calculate it all this marketing time too.
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Yeah, exactly.
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You make some joke about the dog or the handsome guys in the shirt or we were, hey, we were working on your neighbor's house down the road. What happens after that?
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Typically, I'll try to throw in the name. I'll say, okay, like, no big deal. We were just over at Michelle's house cleaning up all of her windows frames and sills across her entire home. Figured I'd stop by, see if I could interest you in that. And we could get you in for pretty cheap if we could do you today because our trucks are already here and we could take off our transportation fee or something to kind of appeal and make them bite.
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Yeah, Some reason to act now, right? Like some sense of urgency. Oh, shoot. Now there's like a deadline.
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Yeah, exactly. And that's kind of the same thing. If you ever go into online marketing on social media, you want to try to do the same kind of things.
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And then you're trying to figure out, well, how many windows are there? We can do the math really quick and get you a number.
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Yeah, exactly. You just tell the homeowner, I'm going to run around, count up the glass. It'll take me 30 seconds and I'll meet you back here with the price. Just so you know. And there's really no reason to say no, you know, it's going to take 30 seconds and you just count up all the glass, multiply it by five or, you know, somewhere relatively around there, depending on how hard you think the house is going to be. And then you just. But it's a really simple process.
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Yeah, I think that would be helpful for me. Just to get a ballpark. Even if I don't want to hire you, at least now I kind of have a benchmark. It's like, you know, for the next guy who comes up or if I want to do my own shopping around. That makes sense.
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One big thing to do as well. When you are dropping the price, you can say, okay, so normally when you were just to call us out, like, it'd be $300 since we're already here. Take off our $100 transportation fee comes down to only $200 and we can do it all right now. And that works really well.
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Eventually, Jack went on to invest in a more expensive but more versatile water fed pole cleaning system that he said was a little over $2,000, but it unlocked the Ability to do bigger houses faster and pay for itself right away. Super Inspiring episode. Earning $10,000 a month as a college student. Episode 630 in your archives if you want to go back and check that one out. Number five on our list of things you can buy on Amazon to make Money is this $200 lawn aerator. And this is rated 4.7 stars. It's a machine that keeps your lawn healthy. It says, achieve optimal turf health with our rolling lawn aerator. Its effective design promotes better air circulation, water absorption, and nutrient penetration into the soil for a lush, healthy lawn. And there was a story from the side Hustle Nation community a while back where the entrepreneur originally set out to sell a lawn mow service. But he ran into a bunch of no's. He was knocking on doors. People were either already used to cutting the grass themselves or they had a service that did it. So it wasn't. There was a huge. It wasn't a huge gap in the market there. But when the pitch changed to, well, when was the last time you had your lawn aerated? All of a sudden people would be like, well, never. Or like, it's been at least five years, I don't know. And that opened the door to make the sale, you know, $100 a yard, $200 a yard, depending on how big it is. And all of a sudden your break even on your initial equipment investment is like, you know, one or two jobs and then it's all gravy after that. In, in the case of the side Hustle Nation example that they gave, they didn't even buy the machine. They just pre booked a day's worth of work and then went to go rent one from Home Depot and pocketed, you know, $800, $900 in profit after, after the rental fee. So I thought that was a pretty smart way to do it. But that's number five, the aerator. A little bit, you know, rolling lawn aerator device number six is a 3D printer. And this is something that we've been actually playing around with at home. Our son made 60 or 70 bucks worth of sales at our local vendor fair. And there's a few ways to do it. In fact, we have a whole video on ways to make money with a 3D printer. We featured in the recent creative side Hustle episodes. This college kid or high school kid who was making like 20 grand a month selling 3D printed croc charms. But one thing you could do is you could sell if you're good at, you know, 3D, like CAD design, you could sell the print files, the digital files, on a handful of marketplaces, or you can go the route that. That we've gone and that Michael Satterley, the Croc charms guy, has gone with selling the physical prints. This is Nico Mendoza from Nico Industries and 3D printed profits on YouTube. If you're making the files anyways, might as well put them up there on these marketplaces. Something I like the way you put it. Create it once, sell it over and over again. That's the holy grail. The other thing that you mentioned was selling the physical prints. Okay. I'm going to produce this thing at home with my own printer and then sell it to another customer. This is the second model of making money with a 3D printer. Overrated.
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Underrated. But it depends on what you sell.
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Right?
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Okay.
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I know people who have very specialized machines and they sell car parts. And he is going to top seven figures this year. I interviewed him. I forgot which episode he was at.3D printer profits on YouTube. He's about to top seven figures this year.
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Wow.
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And it really depends on the niche, but it's vastly underrated. If you sell toys, right? Like the flexible toys that I have most of my students. $2,000 on a weekend, easy. And they sell these toys for 25 bucks. 25. $30, depending on the size.
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Okay.
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And it takes about $3 in material to make. They go off and they sell them. And do they sell out sometimes when they make fifteen hundred dollars in just one day. It's bonkers, dude.
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There are similar marketplaces to go out and list this stuff for sale. You sell this like.
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Yeah, they're selling it at events. They're selling it at farmers markets. They're selling it just everywhere. And it's not just toys either, man. I know this lady who made $30,000 in one month just selling cookie cutters. I know. I forgot which episode. She was the cookie lady. She's also in Livermore.
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Oh, yeah. She says.
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I don't know if you remember, she 3D prints her own cookie cutters.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So she can design. Yeah, yeah. And there was a bonus episode that you had for Dollhouse. Dollhouse furniture, remember?
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Yeah, yeah. Dollhouse miniatures.
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Yeah, dude. They can make those. And it's. They can use a resin printer, which is not the plastic, it's resin, and it's cured with black light. And they can make their own. I remember he made six figures. Right.
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Well, she was like, drop shipping some of this stuff. But I was on another one of these 3D printed product marketplaces and yeah, it was like this cool, like you know, mid century modern furniture. But it's all like dollhouse miniature, 3D printed.
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Right.
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You got to imagine the average order is like if I'm outfitting my entire little setup. I'm not just ordering one chair.
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$200 like that, bro.
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Yeah. You know, for.
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Right.
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20 bucks with the material. The printer that I've highlighted here is the Bambu lab, A1 Mini, which is the model that we have downstairs. Currently priced $200, of course, subject to change very much an entry level 3D printer. But it is cool. It's kind of cool to see the kids get interested and involved with designing stuff and printing stuff and seeing what it can do, what its limitations and capabilities are. And it's been a hit in the neighborhood and in the house. And it's 100%, you know, credit where credit is due. Driven by my wife who's the mechanical engineer in the house and started working with, you know, rapid prototyping and 3D printing stuff like 20 years ago. But that's the one that I've highlighted. Of course you can go up to thousands and thousands of dollars here, but for an entry level one, there are some pretty affordable options. I've got more money making ideas that are hiding in Amazon's catalog coming up right after this. Whether you're a seasoned business or you're experiencing your very first Black Friday Cyber Monday, you need a platform that can handle the rush. The last thing you want is inventory errors or your point of sale crashing when new customers are trying to buy for the first time. So make sure your business is ready for the busiest time of the year with help from our sponsor, Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including dozens of side hustle show guests and 10% of all e commerce in the US Shopify has thousands of templates and tools to make sure your site looks great and is functional at the same time. And if you ever have any issues or questions, Shopify's award winning customer support team is standing by 247 so you can get back to business as fast as possible. If you want to give your customers the best shopping experience this holiday season, you need Shopify this Black Friday. Join the thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today@shopify.com Sidehustle that's shopify.com Sidehustle go to shopify.com SidehustlE and make this Black Friday one to remember. All right, we're talking about the products that you can buy on Amazon and actually make Money with. Number 7 on our list is this Edge Pro Apex knife sharpening kit. It'll run you $285 to $300 depending on when you buy it, but really well rated. This was actually the item that inspired the whole episode because even years after our original knife sharpening episode that we did with Matt Rowell, people still click this affiliate link in the show notes and they order up this knife sharpener. So excited to see that people are taking action on that. Here is Matt from that episode 308 on how he got his start.
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To get started, I went with the.
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Edge Pro sharpening system.
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And there are many out there.
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Like there's a the wicked edge, the kme. There's work sharp, there's bench grinders. So there's a lot of things to choose from. And I mentioned that Craigslist equivalent ad that got me started and that person used the Edge Pro Apex and knowing nothing about it, I just went with that. And now being a few years deep, I am, I feel so fortunate. That's the system that I started with because it is capable of consistently doing great work, meaning a very good edge.
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And it is all highly versatile, which.
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Allows me to like, I got it just to do really pocket knives and kitchen knives. But I've been able to really grow.
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Into a lot of other things with that system. Now let's talk knife sharpening for a little bit because Matt said if you drive down the road, every house that you pass has a bunch of knives in it. So there's no shortage of potential customers. He started out asking friends and family if they needed any knives sharpened or if they knew anybody who did. He put up a Facebook page which started bringing in a few new customers. Then he said his business really started growing steadily without spending any money on marketing or advertising. When he built this little Dropbox at the end of his driveway, he put a sign out there on the road that he says was his number one marketing tool. It's like, you know, knife Dropbox knife sharpening. He said he also set up a booth at the locals local farmers market. And that did have an advertising cost because he said he cost like $25 for the season. So pretty low investment there. But he said in the first season, oh, I kind of looked at the farmer's market as a way to make money. The second season, okay, I'm going to look at the market as a way to kind of get to know the community, get to know the Other vendors. And he said he got a lot more out of the experience in year two. Not just more customers. He said building the community has become the biggest unexpected blessing in starting this side hustle for me. How much does knife sharpening cost? Matt said he charged, and this may have changed over time. $1 per inch of blade with a minimum of $5 per knife. That ended up working out to between 30 and $60 an hour. With the average customer, you know, having four or five knives, you know, maybe it's $20 or $30 per order. But the cool thing is now Matt doesn't just sharpen knives for households, private individuals. He's also got a business client base. Restaurants obviously have a lot of knives. Print shops, lawnmower repair shops, farms. He mentioned one of my favorite lines. He mentioned having a great relationship with a local sheep shearer. So like people need stuff sharpened and if you could be the person that provides that. Matt mentioned learning, you know, practicing for free on his own knives and his friends knives, learning from watching YouTube videos. Right? Like every skill is learnable. And so it was really kind of an inspiring story. He also keeps in touch with his customers because he said, I treat every client as recurring. It's like, well, they're going to get dull again. And especially on the business to business side, if they're getting a lot more use than residential knives, then they're going to be coming back for more more often. Matt also leaned into his Google business profile. So he shows up when somebody searches knife sharpening near me. And when we last spoke, he'd collected over 100 positive reviews, way, way more than the next closest competition. So that's number seven on this list. The knife sharpening kit. Number eight is this $170 car detailing kit. Because mobile detailing is another low overhead, blue collar type of side hustle that can have a really quick break even point on your startup costs because it mostly is labor. There's a few tools involved, but it's mostly labor. And with new cars and used cars being more expensive than ever, I think people are probably willing to invest a little bit more into their existing cars to get some more use out of them. In fact, in our mobile detailing episode, Josh Belk said something really telling. He said for most of his customers, it was their first time ever getting their car detailed. To me, that was this like siren going off about a growing market where he wasn't having to conquest market share or steal business from another provider. It was just that the overall market size, the available pie was getting bigger. So here's Josh Belk from that mobile detailing episode on some of the other must have equipment.
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There's a few things that are really important to have. For one, you obviously need some kind of bucket. We actually started out with using a bucket and a wash mitt, which the bucket is like about $30. I think the one that we bought in the Wash mint was like five or ten dollars. You can go buy one at your local O'Reilly or one on Amazon pretty easy.
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That's a very fancy bucket. What does it do?
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So essentially it has a grit on the bottom that you can use to scrape your wash mitt. And it'll kind of help to separate the dirt from the rest of the water in the shampoo. So that way it just helps to kind of cleanse out the all the dirt that you're using whenever you're washing the car. We actually started without a pressure washer. We were just using these little tanks, pumping them up, spraying them on the vehicles. It worked out okay, but it doesn't allow you to get the underbodies of the car and really the stuff that kind of soaks in a lot. So we were going through a lot of towels with using just those little pump buckets. So we eventually decided to go ahead and buy a pressure washer. It's actually called the Works and it is a completely mobile pressure washer. It's about $170 is how much it cost us. And the great thing about that one was it was battery powered, so we could charge up the batteries before we would go to the site. And the batteries would usually hold for about an hour. We do ask, including now most of our customers, to use their water and electricity and they are completely fine with it. We've only had a few that have apartments and sometimes we can usually work around by having them travel to a friends or families. And a lot of the times they're very flexible and they're completely okay with that. But besides the pressure washer and the bucket, obviously some great towels help some brushes. Chemicals wise, we like to use a degreaser for most of the stuff we do. We have a spray wax and a tire shine. Those three chemicals are really great. I think the extractor we bought was about $120. I would say that's a pretty critical part of the interior part of your business because we made the most of the money to start out with interior detailing. And that extractor is something that it adds a huge value to the service. Whenever you can get out stains and stuff. Like that. So that extractor, which could just be bought on Amazon for around $120, was huge. As well as a steamer. A steamer helps with doing the like leather seats or the side panels on doors or center console areas that have like coffee or some kind of drinks that have been spilled and sticky stuff in there. That steamer was also very helpful. And then obviously a vacuum is definitely needed. Shop vac, about $40 I think is how much we paid for ours. By the end of it, I think we had spent about five to six hundred bucks total on equipment. But a lot of that stuff had been added on like after we started making money at first.
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A
So I don't know what prices are like in your area, but in our area a full detail could be 200 to $350 depending on the size and condition of the car. So it is labor, but I think it's pretty satisfying work, you know, to see the before and after seeing the impact that you had, you know, restoring something to, you know, like new in a lot of cases. And I think you could probably set clients up on a, you know, three, six 12 month recurring plan. So it's like, okay, I'm going to go through the effort of landing a customer once. I want to make sure they call me back next time that car gets dirty is due for their next detail. So Josh mentioned he also gets consistent or ongoing work from a local dealership. Like we want to get this car ready to sell. We really need to give it the full detailed treatment. So he likes that because it's consistent. And they said he actually probably goes over there three, four times a week or him and his partner do. And the other cool marketing tactic that I remember from that episode was they ran this gift card campaign on Facebook for Mother's Day where it's like, what's, you know, you know, you don't want, don't know what to get mom for Mother's Day. Why don't you get her the gift of a clean car? And so they were able to pre book a bunch of work in selling these gift cards through Facebook and then make a bunch of moms happy in town. And of course, you know, then the word of mouth starts to spread. So all in all, really cool, low overhead, low cost kind of startup business that is, I think, ripe for the taking as the pie continues to get bigger there as more people get their cars detailed. That's number eight, the mobile detailing kit and some of the equipment that Josh mentioned. Number nine is this $300 gas powered pressure washer. Which again, one of my all time favorite activities of business that I, you know, might start if I had to start over. So here's Scott Anderson from episode 5:25.
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I'm Scott with Spoon over Pressure washing. And you can make three or four thousand dollars in a month pretty easily. I went down the route of kind of having the leanest startup as possible. So I went and bought a used pressure washer for like a hundred dollars, some hose and other, you know, little accessories. So I think I might have spent like a total of maybe 300 in order to get started and then made simple Facebook page, kind of shared it with my friends and a few days later started having a few people reach out and say, hey, I have this house, you know, people that I don't even know. And so the first house that we did, I think I charged $200 for it and I had really no idea what I was doing. I've only maybe pressure washed, you know, my own house at that time and a few other things. You learn a lot of things that you don't know, that you don't know as far as like, you know, how do I price things out, like do I write it on a piece of paper? There's just so many things you don't know at first. But we did that house. It took us way longer than it should have, but it was, you know, we almost got all of the money we originally put in the business back out because it was, we put maybe 300 into it and got 200 on the first job. So that definitely felt like a success. But at the same time it was a challenge just to kind of get your foot in the door with the first, first one.
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A
So hopefully you start to see the pattern here where I'm looking for the pieces of equipment that I can buy and then break even on it as fast as possible. And I think pressure washing definitely checks that box. Scott mentioned that he expanded the business with some local Facebook ads, he said targeting higher income areas in around town or higher income households. But he actually saw a lot of traction just from his local yard signs that said in big bold font we wash houses and then had his phone number. So very simple value prop on the local yard signs. Again, that's number 525 in your archives if you want to learn more about pressure Washington. Somewhat seasonal business, but satisfying work. Quick ROI likely to have some built in virality to it. By that I mean if you're doing a job there's this really clear before and after and all of a sudden One's like, well now my neighbors, you know, the neighbor's thinking, well now my driveway looks like junk compared to the next one. So I think you could probably turn that one job into two or three just by chatting with the neighbors again. The option that I've selected here is this well rated gas powered pressure washer. Around $300. But you know, you could go Scott's route and find it used as well. Number 10 on the list is this $315 cotton candy cart. And I love this for setting up shop at farmer's markets, events, swim meets, private parties, like, you know, weddings, family reunions, company picnics, that kind of thing. There was a woman in Louisville, Brandy hall started her mobile cotton candy setup a couple years ago. 2023 was pleasantly surprised by the reaction she says in this article. And that prompted her to even open up a brick and mortar location, which is pretty surprising, like a brick and mortar store specializing in cotton candy. But it is something that, you know, it's kind of the impulse, feel good type of purchase. And now Amazon in this mobile treat arena. Amazon also has this $5,000 ice cream e bike that comes complete with an umbrella and a 41 gallon cooler. If you want to start a mobile ice cream business, there's a guy in our neighborhood who does this and he's got some real cute branding where he wears this old timey apron and you know, the paper hat. And I've got to imagine he's done doing a pretty nice seasonal business. Our neighbors even like he has like a, you know, I don't know if he wears an air tag or something, but you know, our neighbors like he even has like a little app where you could track him. Oh, is he going to come by, you know, at what time? I also came across a story of a woman doing this in Baltimore as well. And she did really well, really well on warm evenings in the summer. But she would also get hired out for weddings and private events too. So that would be the cotton candy cart, the low overhead option, or the, you know, full ice cream E bike setup. That's a more serious investment there. We're going through different products you can buy on Amazon to actually make money with. And number 11 on our list is this foam party cannon that runs between 350 and $400 depending on when you get it. And we did a full episode on starting a foam party business earlier this year. And I know the guest in that episode, I know Tim's setup was quite a bit more than this. So you might consider this definitely an entry level foam party cannon that will allow you to test the waters. Maybe you'll run it at your own kids party, see if it's a business that you can get traction on and one that you like doing. But here's tim from episode 6:30 on how he got his initial events booked.
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D
So I found pretty much any daycare, summer camp, park district library, elementary school within about 35 or 40 miles. I made a list and I sent the same postcard to all of them. Now I kind of break it up with individual marketing for the different types. So I might. I would send a different postcard to schools than I would to churches or libraries and things like that. But back then it was just the one postcard. Vistaprint. Send it all. Hope we get some responses. And definitely worked to get the first few responses.
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A
Yeah. How many did you send out?
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I want to say maybe 700 total.
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Okay. Okay.
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So you know you're putting a little bit of money into it at that point.
- [30:45]
A
Yeah. Casting a wide enough net to kind of know if you are shooting completely blank after 700. And maybe the messaging needs some tweaking.
- [30:52]
D
Might be time to turn it around. Right? Yeah. So. And at that point I thought, well, if I needed to, if it wasn't going to work, I could sell the equipment back and I wouldn't really be all that much of a loss.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah. Relatively low risk. What did the equipment cost?
- [31:05]
D
The foam cannon itself, I use a professional grade model that cost at the time about $2,500 for the canon. And then I would say for other things that are in the foam party setup, we have these barriers like PVC and some vinyl with our marketing on there. Barriers to keep the foam from coming back at the person shooting the foam.
- [31:28]
A
And okay, I'm picturing like a medieval like shield.
- [31:31]
D
Yeah. In case the wind shifts. So it's kind of like a little wall about 4ft high maybe with our marketing on the front that they see. And then it keeps the foam from blowing back at us and getting on our equipment. And then just little things like. Well, we have a, a 5x5 tent with our branding on it that just kind of makes it look professional. And then a lot of little things like tools that you might need and hoses and electrical cords and speakers.
- [31:58]
A
Yes. You just need a water source and you know, BYO bubbles basically. And then this professional cannon at a bare minimum.
- [32:07]
D
Right.
- [32:07]
C
Yeah.
- [32:07]
D
So we do need a water source. Just a regular hose hookup works. And then an electrical outlet. A regular outlet works if it's just for one foam cannon. If it's multiple foam cannons or if you're not close enough to an outlet, then we bring a generator. In that situation, for most of, like, the smaller events, daycares, summer camps, and stuff like that, it's just one. One foam cannon. And so, yeah, I started off with one. Got a few bookings before I even did any foam parties. Even though I had some booked, I bought a second setup and it just kind of kept on rolling.
- [32:42]
A
So what I loved was this early season marketing strategy. I'm going to send the postcards out in January for bookings in the spring and summer. That kind of allowed Tim to invest in equipment with more confidence since he was already collecting deposits for those future events. And from there, it was about delivering a great experience. It was about collecting positive reviews and letting the word of mouth spread, especially among the clients he had that were part of a. Like a chain of daycares, for example. So definitely go back and check out the foam party canon episode number 6:30 in your podcast feed for the Side Hustle show. I've got more Amazon products that you can turn into money makers coming up right after this. Number 12 is this $550 photo booth that I found. Now, the iPad isn't included in this setup, but it says works with any iPad. So that would be an additional cost to consider if you don't already have that. But it's a business where you can recoup your equipment costs in just a few events like some of the other examples that we've covered. Here's why Kat Block was attracted to the photo booth business and why she didn't let the level of existing competition scare her. This is from episode 571.
- [33:54]
H
It's literally a business in a box. Just add an iPad and you're good to go.
- [33:57]
A
Was there any. It sounds like not, but was there any, like, competitive analysis? If I'm going to bring this thing home and I got to figure out, well, who else is out there already offering this in my town? Was there. I mean, imagine there were already players in that space. And you say, well, I know I can compete anyways, I'm going to go for it.
- [34:16]
H
Yeah, definitely. So I actually went to school for entrepreneurship. So as soon as I came home, I just started going crazy on this business. And I did do that. I did a competitive analysis of everyone in Ottawa, which is where I started my business. And at that time, there was so many photo booths, like, it was insane how many photo booths were out there. But they all offered the same thing and their price point reflected what they were offering. So to give you an idea, like pretty much every single one of them offered the same, like I said, hat, boas, sunglasses, glasses and stuff. Some of them offered print, some didn't. And some of them were just like DIY kits. But they all ranged around 3 to $400 for like a 3 hour event. And I'm like, that's too cheap. I need to be like way more than that to actually make money. But I saw a huge need in our city for that and something that they. There was a need there for a more customized, stylized, high quality photo booth that people could actually use as a tool. Because the big thing I saw with it was that a photo booth is such an amazing branding and marketing tool that people just didn't see. They thought it was like a fun thing to do, which it is, right? But nowadays we don't print our photos anymore. So for someone to walk away with a picture of themselves and also has like your event branding or something like that on it, like they're going to keep that because. Because we don't get pictures. Like. So yeah, I just saw so much opportunity. I could literally talk about this like for hours.
- [35:45]
A
I mean, that's a really good reaction because there's like this old parable of this shoe company. They send their sales representative off to some third world country and they send two sales reps. The first guy comes back, it's like, situation hopeless, nobody has shoes. And the other guy comes back is like, this is an amazing market opportunity. Nobody has shoes. And so you're looking at this and saying, well yeah, there's already a lot of players in this space, but there's an opportunity for differentiation by going up market, by, you know, not trying to compete in the glasses and hats and boas market, by doing something a little bit different. And maybe you can describe what that looked like from an early positioning or early marketing standpoint.
- [36:26]
H
I mean, for us in terms of marketing, like the first thing that I did was reach out to a lot of the business networking groups that were in the area that I knew had event planners. Because I figured, you know, event planners have people who have budget for events and if they're spending money on an event planner, then they're probably going to spend money on their other vendors. Like they're not going to look for someone who's like running a business out of their basement. Right. They didn't know I was running it out of my basement. But that's a different story. Altogether. So we did this one networking event that actually brought us probably most of the clients that we started off with and still have to this day actually. And what I did is I went all out. I literally approached this event planner and I just said, hey, I know you're having this event. I'm new to the industry and I know you don't trust me enough to hire me right now, but I want to show you what I can do and why I'm different. I'm like, I want to offer you a free photo booth for your next event and I'm going to like brand it all to you and make it look amazing and blah, blah, blah. And so we did that. We literally, like, we made sure we got the best backdrops. Like, you know, a lot of people use like velvet curtain backdrops and ones that are see through. And we made sure that we sourced like really luxurious sequin backdrops that weren't transparent. You know, they actually looked really nice when they were set up and stuff. We handmade all of our props using like a Cricut machine. I don't know if you know what those are, but it's like a die cut machine for paper. So we made all of our props out of paper and they were customized and yeah, they just, they were completely floored. Our lineup was through like never ending for that event to the point they had to cut it off and be like, hey, you guys need to come back to the event.
- [38:09]
A
So because the market for a generic photo booth rental photo booth experience had become pretty commoditized, Kat had to go up market. We're going to do business events, we're going to do custom branding and we're going to be able to command a premium. Be sure to check out that full episode number. 471. Sorry, I think I misspoke before, but episode 471 for more on the photo booth business. But again, this is one where I think strategic partnerships can play a big role in addition to building a Google business profile presence. By strategic partnerships, I mean thinking kind of like Kat did, of who your target customers are already doing business with. The event planners in her case, but potentially catering Companies, photographers, videographers, DJs, florists, where you can refer business back and forth as you get it. Number 13 on our list of things you can buy on Amazon to make Money is this $675 mobility scooter. It is Amazon's best seller in the category. Designed to safely support up to 265 pounds. The mobility scooter and its tires are says were engineered for durability and safety. It has got a max speed of 3.7 miles an hour. I don't know how fast that is relative to other mobility scooters, but has a driving distance of 12 miles per charge. So you know, I love a good rental business and this is the play here where you buy the thing once, rent it out over and over again. The mobility scooter rental episode that we did a couple years ago got lots of positive feedback. So here's Lenny Timm from that one who actually went with with a higher end scooter but he found it used to bring the cost down and the creative way that he validated demand before he even went to buy it.
- [39:52]
I
A brand new one is about 1500 bucks right now. A little less, a little more. But I actually bought mine used and I look for about 500 bucks. I go on Facebook, Marketplace or any other local marketplace and I'm looking to get it for about 500 bucks. So as you, you can, you know, see I pretty much count my money back within 1, 2, 3 rentals.
- [40:14]
A
Yeah, I'm thinking yeah, if it's 250 a week plus 75 delivery like a couple weeks later, I'm in the black on this, on this unit. How many do you have at this point?
- [40:21]
I
Right now I only have seven.
- [40:23]
A
So say only. I mean that's like, yeah, that's a pretty serious fleet.
- [40:27]
I
Yeah, it's not bad. I have seven right now and I, you know, I make it work. I could definitely have a lot more but I just, I keep it completely a side business.
- [40:36]
A
The other interesting thing that Lenny did, and this is from episode 564, is he didn't even buy that first one until he had a critical mass of inbound inquiries wanting to rent from him.
- [40:46]
I
When I came up with the idea, it was back in 2019, my first thing was to just build a website just to see if there's a demand. I want to see if there's a demand for these scooter rentals. I didn't go out to buy any equipment, I didn't do anything like that. So that's pretty much how I started just to build out a really nice website just to see if I'm getting customers, if people are going to call, if people are going to make any requests before I actually go out and buy anything or commit to the business.
- [41:14]
A
Did you do anything specifically on the SEO front to build backlinks, to build the Google business profile, to do anything other than just Having like the exact, you know, what somebody might be searching for in the URL and then in the content on the site itself.
- [41:30]
I
Well, first of all, the name la Mobility Scooter Rental. So I tried to get a domain that's gonna, you know, match, I guess, search pretty good. I didn't really do anything special. I don't know much about SEO. I just built a website. I did as much backend SEO as I could. Whatever they asked me to fill out, I filled it all in. You know, mobility scooter rentals, mobility scooters, all that kind of stuff. Put some good pictures, put up as much info as I could. I'm pretty sure I, you know, opened up a Google my business page right away. And I may have did the Yelp as well at the same time, but that's pretty much it.
- [42:03]
A
Did you have a metric in mind? Well, if I get five requests a month, then I'm doing it or something like that.
- [42:08]
I
Probably more than that. Yeah. I definitely had something in mind where I would want to make decent money. And it would probably have to be several requests a day.
- [42:18]
A
Again, that was from episode 5 64, one that I refer back to quite a bit and one that I know has inspired several listeners to take action and start their own scooter rental business. If you like this model, you're wondering, well, what other unconventional things that you could rent out for a profit. Make sure to download your free listener bonus for this episode where I share 25 other assets that you can buy once and get paid for over and over again. So that's number 13, the mobility scooter rental business. Number 14 is this $1,100 party inflatable, kind of a bounce house, castle type of thing. There are a few different options for commercial grade inflatables on Amazon, but this one had the best ratings. Once it's blown up, it is 13ft by 13ft, which is probably big enough to have three or four kids bouncing at any one time. Here is Corey Jeffries from way back in episode 280 on getting his party inflatables business off the ground. What I remember from this call was the inspiration to start. Corey wanted to start investing in real estate, but then found inflatable houses to have a much lower startup cost and a much stronger ROI than the traditional brick and mortar houses.
- [43:27]
J
I wasn't really concerned about the competition so much as I was concerned about making my money back. So I really wasn't worried about the competition.
- [43:34]
C
What makes you say that?
- [43:35]
A
What gave you that confidence?
- [43:36]
J
The fact That I had a family defeat at the time. And I just took out this 800 from taxes and I had to make it back. So it was kind of a not really worried about competition. I just want to get my few customers and I'll make my money back.
- [43:47]
A
All right, fair enough.
- [43:48]
C
I like that.
- [43:49]
A
I like that. Parlay the tax refund into new business. Okay, so what happens next? You put it up for rent. How do you get your first customers?
- [43:55]
J
So it's funny, my first customer was actually my aunt. She called me. My cousin was having a birthday party and I had just gotten the bounce house. Hadn't even did any marketing. I told a few family members and she called me and she said, hey, I want to rent the bounce house. I was like, don't worry about it. I'll give it to you for free. It's my cousin. She said no. She said if I would go to anybody else, I would pay them. So I want to pay you. So I went and did her event. She had some neighbors. And then we ended up the next rental was one of her neighbors. From word of mouth. Just kind of picked up steam from there with a few Craigslist ads and Facebook ads and so forth.
- [44:26]
A
How much does it cost to rent one of these things?
- [44:28]
J
So when I first started renting them, I was doing 120 for an all day session. And then each year I slowly increase my prices. So right now we're at 145. Just depending on where you go, they can range from anywhere between 120 to like 200 bucks to rent.
- [44:43]
A
At those rates, you book a few rentals, you got the equipment paid off, and everything else for the life of the inflatable is gravy. Now, the important thing to consider in this business is the insurance, which, as I understand it, can be pretty expensive. It's actually what led Tim Carthensen to the foam party business instead. So make sure to do your diligence on that before you go. Plunk down $1,000 or more for a bounce house, but that's number 14 on this list. Number 15 is this vending machine, which is listed at $6,000 on Amazon. Now, you probably shouldn't buy a vending machine on Amazon, but they actually do have some for sale ranging from like two to six thousand dollars or more. But the reason is that is you're not going to have the same financing options that you would if you went straight to the manufacturer or some vending suppliers that some of our vending machine guests have recommended. The bigger challenge is finding the right, you know, high traffic location, to put it. This is one thing to buy the machine, but then, you know, how do you get in front of a hungry crowd? So here's Mike Hoffman from vendingpreneurs on what he looks for in a location and how he might make that pitch.
- [45:52]
E
It's super easy. I think the first thing is the examples you just rattled off. So senior center and let's say an apartment complex. The thing they all have in common is they have a front desk person that works there. So you can just roll right in there. They're not going to know you from anyone else. And you can just say, hey, is your general manager or your property manager in today? And if she's like, oh, no, you can always ask for the business card and send an email. But yeah, that's exactly what I did. That first location I landed, I was like, hey, is your manager in? And she happened to be in. She's like, oh, my gosh. Coming with COVID we can't put out refreshments, blah, blah, blah. We want to move forward. It's just such a low barrier to entry. By just doing that pop in, your.
- [46:31]
A
Ask was like, tell me about your current vending situation. Like, what's that line?
- [46:35]
E
Yeah, or just like, do you want to provide modern amenities? And then you just start asking questions about foot traffic to qualify them. Them. So how many people live here? Or how many units are here? And they'll say, okay, Nick, there's 200 units. And then you're like, okay, well, how many people live in those units? Because some might be two or three bedroom. They're like, oh, 400 people. Like, right away, you're sitting on a 1500 to two grand gold mine.
- [46:57]
A
Just with that, is there a minimum residency or occupancy that you're looking for?
- [47:02]
E
Yeah, we like to target 100 units as a minimum or a hundred plus employees.
- [47:08]
A
Okay, 100 residential units or 100 employees. It's hard to imagine an office building without this in there already. But you're finding, like, this building has been here for 25 years. No one has ever asked us about vending before. You know, that's a great idea.
- [47:21]
E
Like, does that happen all the time? And in fact, what you'd be really surprised about is we're taking over a lot of the market. So current user, let's say that location, they probably already have vending machines that aren't being stocked. Stocked because the baby boomer generation doesn't use a cell phone. The only way they can track inventory is driving by the property where like on my phone across the country I can look at all my vending machines, even my micro market in Philadelphia and see what I've done in sales in the last hour so then I can get ahead of what needs stocked before it actually shows up empty customer facing of like okay, we've sold eight out of 10 salads. We have two left. We need to backfill those salads where right now these place is we're taking over for they either have vending machines that are broken, they have vending machines that don't allow credit card usage. Well guess what, 80% of your sales are going to be with card not cash anymore.
- [48:18]
A
Yeah. So it's not so much that they have never considered vending, it's that their existing provider is not living up to expectations or it could be doing better.
- [48:27]
E
Yeah, it's like either that existing provider took on a bigger let's say the Coke provider of Washington has vending as a side service. Well, is that Coke provider more worried about topping off the cafeteria with Coke in the school or are they more worried about the teacher's lounge vending machine?
- [48:45]
A
Check out that full episode with mike number 599 in your feed to learn more. And once you do, you can book a call with his team to learn more about the vending prospects in your specific area. My referral link for that is side hustlenation.com vending call all one word now for the full list of products you can buy on Amazon to make money with, plus some other suggestions. Make sure to check out the show notes for this episode. Just hit the link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there. And if you end up starting a new side Hustle around any of these ideas, be sure to let me know. Maybe you'll be the next guest. But big thanks to all our amazing guests who have shared about their equipment and marketing strategies over the years. And big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on the.