Summer Businesses for High School Students?

An anonymous reader asks: "A friend and I are going into our final year of high school, and given a variety of factors (the relative paucity of technology jobs for HS students, etc.), would like to start our own business. We'll probably have about $1000 in capital, but (in effect) start out with no other resources other than our own skills (technical and otherwise). We have no constant access to a car, which means on-site tech support is effectively out. We'd like to start something in the technology field (IT, software design, hardware construction - we can solder, web design, etc.), but are open to any suggestions. We'd also like some sort of business we can start this summer, but can continue to maintain. What do you suggest as a business idea for the summer->longer term?"

First things that come to mind...

[Vaevictis666]

...Hosting and web design.

Rent a box from somewhere, and harass friends, family, and neighbors if they know anyone who could use a web presence. You provide the hosting, set up domains and stuff, and if they need it, some basic web design.

There's even a few packages out there that have a very simplified markup structure (ie. _underline_ and *bold* and stuff) that means your potential clients can edit pages directly.

Your costs are monthly fees to your host, and one-time fees for domains and such. Income is monthly hosting fees from clients, and one-time or recurring fees for web design, graphics, and maybe even some freelance coding for special features and whatnot.

There's little money left in comp industry..

[Creepy Crawler]

I'd not even bother.

1: Everybody can make a website.. Notice I didnt say good
2: Anti-crapware like the new AOL discs /ad aware and the like make problem solving easier on consumers
3: Real software issues on MS systems always require a reinstall-Use vendor wipe disc
4: If its a hardware issue, you cant repair motherboards and the like. On dell/gateway crap, it's "Buy New Machine"
5: You're just HS students. I'm 22 and people look down at our age group as consultants. The "Consultant" is supposed to be 30-40 after numerous lay-offs and fires (from idiotic companies that lie to get out of unemp.)

Yeah, at 22, I'm jaded enough to be a consultant. I've not seen it all, but close.

Re:Have you considered mowing grass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very difficult, at least in Texas, the illegals are willing to do the job so cheaply that it doesn't even pay min wage...

eBay?

[ubiquitin]

Here's my advice to high-school students looking to be entrepreneurial during a summer: find a way to make or import something interesting and sell it on eBay. You don't have a lot of overhead and actually wind up with real-world experience of building and/or supporting a product.

As a 19 year old...

[krs-one]

As a 19 year old college student with a ton of ideas all the time, its hard to pursue any of them. I keep a small notepad with me at all times. Anytime I get any inspiration (if its in the middle of a professor giving a lecture), I write it down. Then I can go and review it later.

But I was in your position a few years ago (I was a Freshman in highschool, not a senior). Here's what I did (in 2000):

The local science fair had a web design contest. I had been doing web design for about a year, mainly for my own amusement and knowledge. I also had a close friend who did the same, and since we needed teams of 2, we formed a web design team. We made a web page (one we actually wrote, didn't use Dreamweaver) according to the specs of the contest, and totally blew away the judges. They thought it was the most amazing thing ever. They both gave us their business cards, told us to contact them, we did, and bingo, $12 an hour work for each of us. We were psyched.

Eventually our client fell out from beneath us and never contacted us back, but we got paid for the work we did, so all was good.

Another science fair story: the magnet high school program I attended required everyone to do a science fair project every year. Since I was(am) a decent programmer, I always did stuff in the computer science category. I loved the stuff, and the category was small so I was always almost guranteed to win. I did a project on Artificial Intelligence one year, and OpenGL another and Massive Parallel Rendering a third year. All the judges loved it, and a lot offered me jobs. I already had a well paying job at the time, so I passed on them, but I got my name out there.

Those are my opinions and experiences, take them for what their worth from someone in your shoes a few years ago. Keep in mind, as well, that all of this cost me nothing (in fact, it all made me $$$ as 1st place at the web design contest got me money, and so did 1st place at science fair, not to mention the actual jobs).

Good luck!

-Vic

computer related stuff, and not

[timothy]

(A lot of things depend a lot on where you are, whether your lack of regular transportation effectively traps you in suburbia or elsewhere, whether there are people with money to spend on summertime child labor, etc ... that said, random thoughts)

computer related:
1) consider an internship somewhere. Less exciting as an idea than starting your own, but it can also lead to contacts, give you experience, etc. All sorts of businesses need computer-smart people, don't just think of ones that sell computers or write software for sale ...

2) In your own walkable / bikeable radius, offer to install wireless systems so people can work wirelessly and otherwise share their high-speed internet service. Yes, they're supposed to be open-the-box easy, but context is everything; for a lot of people, it would be easily worth paying for your time to, well, open the box. (And often setup is *not* that easy, so ...)

Offer to provide, install, configure and test
a) consumer-grade wireless systems (see below)
b) non-wireless simple home networking (many people don't yet want wireless, and that's OK ... they will, next summer ;))

(See techbargains.com, and tigerdirect.com for cheap 802.11 boxes ... I've tried 5 different brands -- Linksys, D-Link, Siemens, SMC, Netgear -- and they work similarly enough that I wouldn't sweat the difference in most cases: the differences are in interface, bells and whistles, default IP addresses, things like that.
(See http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/c ategory_tlc.asp?CatId=35)

Keep careful track of what households get which models, a) to keep track of which models bring complaints, so you know to avoid them ;) and b) so you know which default IP address each uses, how to set up MAC address cloning, etc. Maybe you'll find a favorite brand to recommend. And if you can buy such boxes cheaply, as a commodity, you can sell them for a uniform markup, with a profit that varies depending on how well you can find bargains. Ebay, too. Your customers won't be paying for the AP itself, but for the whole package of box + install + minor training. Or, if they have one already, discount your price in a way that's fair to both parties.

Recommend and use DHCP + whatever level of security is worth it; charge more for more work, explain why and be up-front about it.

This is the kind of business that's still viable (might not be in 2 years, when practically everyone is wireless, and the cable company / DSL providers all supply wireless boxes by default, etc.), can be done by young people on bikes with backpacks or baskets to hold the necessary parts. Let people know that they are responsible for understanding / dealing with their ISPs' terms of service, though.

Think guerilla marketing [gmarketing.com]: print clever and punchy business cards with lots of contact info; have a clean, legible, simple web site (with a friendly FAQ list); keep track of your customers (and plot them on a map); ask people to recommend you to their friends; be courteous; give followup calls after a day and after a month; tape your business card to the bottom of the AP (and a note of the default IP address!); leave a copy of Knoppix around for when those with Microsoft Windows get sick of spyware, adware and viruses ;)

(Oh, and even if people don't have high-speed access, it's still nice to be wireless and to have shareable internet access: see http://monkey.org/~timothy/dialup.html ... it's a bit outdated, but the point is, 56k modem + AP with serial port beats a 56k modem by itself.)

Not-computer-related:

1) Circumstances determine what makes sense in your area, but having recently moved to Washington state, I find that there are coffee huts (some substantial, some plywood and duct-tape) *everywhere* selling generally pretty good coffe

Re:OP: Mow lawns. No joke.

[yog]

Great advice except for the no taxes part. That's against the law. You are required to report your income whether it's cash or check. Actually, some of your clients will probably prefer to write you a check anyway so you will have a paper trail.

Furthermore, if you want to account for your time in order to impress a potential employer in the future, you had better have your ducks in a row; there are ways of finding out. Otherwise, you will have to lie and say you spent the summer doing nothing. That might be dodgy given the fact that 30-40 people around your neighborhood will testify that they hired you, and hundreds more saw your flyer.

Maybe you are OK with working under the table like the thousands of carpenters and the like who try to get paid in cash, but if you ever want to do work for the federal government either as an employee or contractor, they will probably want to know every job you had for the past 10 years, so you then have the choice of perjuring yourself or admitting that you owe back taxes, neither of which is particularly great news to the employer.

Finally, you should consider that finances are a vital part of running a business; the accounting and tax work you will do will be useful experience for later on when you start the next great software company or whatever you end up in.

Good luck!

Go find customers who are ready to buy.

[toygeek]

Well, When I was 17 y/o I went and got a job at an office supply store. Staples #134 in Palm Springs, CA. I was the snot nosed kid who worked the computer section at the time. After I was there a few months, I started getting a good reputation with customers and staff, and got LOTS of side business doing things like:

- installing parts I sold
- setting up peoples new computers
- migrating peoples data to new computers
- teaching them how to USE their computers
- general tech work

Of course I had to make sure that the general manager was OK with that, and he was cool with it as long as I wasn't constantly pimping myself. I usually let people ASK if I knew anybody who could do such and such and I'd say "I know *just* the guy". I'd ask for THEIR contact info, and I'd call them after hours (or before if I was working 1-9 like I did often.)

I charged $25/hr, with a 1hr minimum. I'd go through their computers and make sure they were running good, THEN I'd start teaching them. I made thousands and thousands of dollars this way. It could be hard work but I'd take the stuff that other area consultants wanted $75/hr to work on, or just plain wouldn't do.

It gave me a good base, and you know, I STILL do lots of that stuff on the side, but these days I charge $45/hr and most of the work is web design work that I bid per job, flat rate. Yeah, I'm cheap, but I'm not out to make a killing. I'm out to make a *living*.

The OTHER thing I used to do alot was to find a computer shop online that would wholesale parts to me, and I'd price out uber-cheap computers that were custom built. Then, I'd advertise it in the paper at a really good price, cheaper than most places. Very little profit margin, if any. If they ordered, I'd buy the parts, build it, and deliver. Then if they wanted extra help with it, no problem. $25/hr.

If you want to figure out how to get customers to spend money, go to a pet shop. See those cute fish for 10 cents? Bowl, $5. Pump, $10. Food, $3, rocks, $2. There, now you just made $20 on a 10 cent fish.

The moral of my story? People are sheeple. You need to learn how to lead them into buying from you, but it has to be their idea. Wanna sell $20 of fish supplies? Find the cutest 10 cent fish you can, and sell the heck out of them.

Technical Youth

[Krezel]

Here in the Detroit area we have a company called Technical Youth [technicalyouth.com] that hires up high school and college techies and farms them out as temp work. Looks like good money.