Bright Home Business Ideas

Friday, May 1st, 2009 John

While you are surviving job loss, you may want to consider this. Hopeful entrepreneurs, most of whom have lost their jobs, are capitalizing on layoffs while also highlighting the plight of the jobless. They are concocting layoff-related merchandise, offering wristbands, mugs, T-shirts, board games and more to the recently dismissed, whose ranks are rising. More than five million jobs have been lost since December 2007, and more cuts are expected this year. Here are our concrete ideas:

1. Padding dwindling bank accounts is what originally motivated Ms. Aucoin and Ms. Bourn. They needed to find a twist to earn money. Ms. Bourn was forced to sell her house after her hours in an interior-design sales position were cut back. The idea of the bracelets came after Ms. Aucoin had depleted her entire savings and was still surviving a job loss. The two women thought starting their own business might be the only way to earn a living, so they began to brainstorm ideas until the wristband came up. They researched the cost and decided it was doable for their budget. Ms. Bourn used $1,000 of her savings to invest in the business, and Ms. Aucoin built a Web site for the product. The pair found a manufacturer that would customize the bracelets and ordered 500 Laid Off bracelets. Within weeks, the pair launched the Web site laidoffneedajob.com and began hawking the wristbands for $3 each. They used Ms. Bourn’s apartment as a makeshift mail depot while spreading the word about their venture via social-networking site Twitter, which helped spark sales. Last week, their Web site averaged 500 visitors a day. After about five weeks in business, the pair has sold 4,500 bracelets, broken even on their investment and pocketed more than $8,000. A former sales manager for a pharmaceutical-equipment company ordered three bracelets after seeing someone with one at an airport. So far, it has stirred interest. Just by seeing this, people start asking questions. And one of his bracelet-wearing friends already has landed an interview.

2.Some surviving job loss products take a little more work. Stay-at-home mom Traci Sanders revived a homemade idea she’d thought of in the last recession. Back then she made a poster resembling a job-search-themed game inspired by Candyland as a Christmas present for her unemployed husband. Ms. Sanders, 42, has since taken the game idea back out and will start selling it on her site, jobsearchagameoffrustration.com next month. She is in talks with two local bookstores that are interested in offering the game, titled “Job Search! A Game of Frustration.” The poster that inspired the game is on sale on the Web and in a local bookstore. Players draw cards with messages like “Unemployment rate drops — first time in three months, move ahead two spaces” and “Wonder when friend will get job so he can hire you, lose one turn.” Ms. Sanders hopes the game will cheer up job seekers. This is because even if you move one step forward and two steps back, it shows that there’s actually a hopeful path.

3. Other entrepreneurs have been stepping in with their own offbeat ideas for those who are surviving job loss. Daniel Brabson, 38, launched RecessionJunction.com after seeing his freelance contracts as a benefit coordinator for insurance companies disappear. The site sells beer mugs, T-shirts and bumper stickers with humorous sayings about the economy and layoffs. Bestsellers include a coffee mug with “Alms for the Poor” on it, and a pint glass that says “This Beer is Going Down Like the Stock Market.” This is in the hope that people are able to kind of laugh at themselves. It is tough for a lot of people. Mr. Brabson took out a $3,000 bank loan to start the business and launched the site in February. He uses several local vendors to customize designs for each product. Mr. Branson so far has sold 150 items, which are priced between $4 and $14 each, and hopes to break even in the next two months.

4. After his own layoff in 2005, Larry Dinsmore, an information-technology professional, started a Web site called Damn I Need a Job, which offers T-shirts with a customer’s cover letter printed on it. Each customized T-shirt costs $25. Mr. Dinsmore, who is now employed, says Web-site traffic has increased by about 30% in the past few months, but that sales are steady. The target audience does not have a lot of money to blow.