The weather is getting cooler, football season has begun, and soon the leaves will start to fall. Raking leaves is a tedious chore that homeowners hate! This opens up a perfect business opportunity for you and your buddies to take part in. People will be very willing to pay for a leaf removal service because you will save them a whole lot of time and a sore back.

Start-up costs are low, as all you really need to start off with is a rake, gloves, and some leaf bags. Gloves are important because it is very easy to get blisters on your hand from raking. Decide on how you want to charge… maybe by the hour, or maybe by the bag? Create a flyer of some sort and advertise your service in areas that have lots of trees in people’s yards.

Once you establish your business, you may want to think about buying better equipment like leaf blowers and such. This will speed up the time it takes you to do a job, therefore you can schedule more jobs in a single day.

Photo credit: *Mickey

The other day, Dave introduced me to this website called Centsports.com. Centsports.com is a legalized online sports betting site with a little twist… The site gives you money to play with. In other words, you get to make sports bets without ever having to risk your own money. The site was developed by this guy named Victor Palmer, who was aiming to build a sports betting site around the laws that banished online betting.

You are probably wondering how this whole thing works. Well, the whole website is based around advertising, and that’s where all their funding comes from to be able to pay for people to place bets. Every time you visit the site, advertisers must pay the website for the impression, and if someone clicks on an ad the advertisers have to pay the website even more. Because of this, the website gives you ten cents to play with for free. In fact, if you keep losing, they will always give you another ten cents to play with.

So you place your bets on any of the available sporting events, and wait to see the outcome. The site even uses real Vegas betting lines. You’re right, ten cents is not very much at all. However, I placed my first ten cent bet on a 5 line parlay and ended up winning $2.65. Now I have that amount of money to bet with, and can make even bigger bets in the future. After looking at the leader board, a bunch of people have balances over $600. They turned $0.10 into $600. Not bad at all. You can cash out whenever you want, as long as your balance is over $20. It’s a ton of fun, and I highly recommend it to all… You have nothing to lose. Signing up takes less than a minute.

If you are interested in signing up and placing your first bet, click below!

http://www.centsports.com/?opcode=553648

Here’s a bright idea for all you college students who are tight on money during the school year. If you have a car, you should give a student taxi service a shot, especially if the popular night life spots are not within walking distance.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are usually the big nights when college students go out on the town, so I would recommend picking one of those nights to conduct your service. Most “real” taxi services are extremely pricey, so many students would be willing to use your service instead if you charged a smaller fee. It’s a good idea to set a pre-paid amount depending on where the customer wants to go. This will eliminate the problem of people running away without paying too. You will have to figure out a good price depending on how much gas you use up.

Start with your friends and let them know you are willing to transport them for smaller price than a regular taxi. Your service should spread quickly by word of mouth, and you should end up with decent amount of customers to keep you busy all night. Maybe make up some simple business cards with your phone number on it to pass around.

If your customers become too much for one person to handle, it may be time to recruit some other drivers and start your own full blown company. If you do this you will need to check taxi regulations in your town, and get special licenses and such.

Photo credit: Seamus Murray

Remember Bill Nye the Science Guy? With his quirky antics and silly puns, his PBS television show helped kids to see the fun side of science and physics. Even though Bill Nye show no longer airs new episodes, its creators have come up with a new successful show that has popularized another subject that can sometimes be pretty dry: making, managing, and saving money. This time, instead of using a zany, comical scientist as a host, the television show connects with young viewers like you (if you are a teenager or even younger!) who have already made it big with their product or service. The series of half-hour episodes covers all aspects of financial basics, from saving and budgeting to spending and investing. In particular, BizKid$ places an emphasis on inventiveness and creativity by highlighting the stories of young entrepreneurs, and provides tips on how you can start up similar businesses.

The recently remodeled BizKid$ website offers a blog with stories on young money makers as well as an entire teaching curriculum to go along with the television episodes. Also, a “Cool Biz Stuff” category provides tools and resources just for kids, ranging from credit calculators to a lemonade-stand simulation game.

With Biz Kid$ episodes airing on over 330 television stations, the TV series and its corresponding website are vital resources for any young aspiring entrepreneur looking for tips and advice, or even just for kids who are looking for good ways to save and spend their hard-earned money. Check it out and see for yourself!

As an update to our previous lemonade stand challenge, we have decided to turn this into a full-fledged contest with a winner, a prize, and bragging rights to boot. We will send a “Benjamin” ($100) to the winning entry. 

There are a few catches however. You must fulfill the “experiment” as stated in the Lemonade Stand Challenge article, but we will go over the rules again…

• A minimum of one hour must be spent giving away “free” lemonade, but accepting tips. Make a sign if you want! (We Accept Tips, Thanks for the Tips, Tipping is not a city in China, etc.)
• You must spend an equal amount of time selling lemonade at normal price, and still accept tips if you want.
• Provide statistics: number of lemonade sales in each session, price you charged during non-free session, total revenue in each session, average revenue per sale, biggest sale/tip in each session.
• Must send in results by e-mail.
• Include in e-mail a photo of you with lemonade holding a sign of any size that says Finding Benjamin. This verifies that you didn’t make all this up. (Videos are also acceptable if you feel up to the challenge!)
• We will ask your permission if we want to post any photos you send us .
• All entries that fulfill the above requirements will be put into a hat and the winner will be drawn at random. 
• The deadline for this contest is September 7, 2009 (Labor Day), so get busy perfecting that lemonade-selling strategy!

Send your results to chrish@jfhinnovative.com

To most, lemonade stands represent one of the most primitive ways to test out entrepreneur skills, even from a young age. The thought of making money excites young people for whatever reason, and a $40 dollar profit makes them feel like millionaires (at least that’s how it made us feel). Case in point, we decided at the ages of 7 and 11 to try out a lemonade and cookie stand behind the tee on hole 14 at a nearby golf course during its annual Labor Day golf tournament. With minimal set-up, low start-up costs and a few volunteers to run supplies back and forth, we were up and running. Being the young, impressionable kids that we were, we also had a cursing fee along with our lemonade and cookie sales. Whether it was the cursing fee or our sign that said “Tipping is not a city in China”, we made some solid tips that day.

Older and wiser now, we are still wondering if we could have made even more money that day. Here is the experiment we want YOU to try:

• For two hours, sell your lemonade at normal price
• For the next two hours, advertise “free” lemonade, but with a sign that says “tips accepted” (or in our case, “Tipping is not a city in China”)
• Keep statistics: how many purchases, average revenue per purchase, total revenue

Send in your complete results to us,  and we’ll post again later on to see who found the most Benjamins!

Inc.com is also holding a Lemonade Stand Contest. Check it out to see how other kids are finding success with their lemonade stands, and submit your own story!

By Staff

Do you have a passion for filmmaking? If so, and if you’re any good at it, howcast.com has an awesome program for you. When you apply for the program, you pick a movie topic from a list and howcast.com will send you a script, voice-over, graphics, and guidelines all to be used in your video. Once you shoot and edit your film, you send it back in to howcast.com and pray that it will be accepted.

The Good News

For every accepted video you send in, howcast.com will send you $50. If your video attracts more than 40,000 views, they will split the ad revenue your video generated. 

The Bad News

You must have a 3-chip DV or High Def camera and an editing program that can handle .MOV files. Howcast.com says iMovie and Pinnacle will not work.

Photo Credit: reinn

By Staff

Wield your pooper-scoopers, people.  The poop-scooping market is steamier than ever, and anyone can do it. Nobody likes to pick up their pet’s droppings, so people are very willing to hire outside services to do this dirty work. The thing is, poop-scooping really isn’t that bad if you have the right tools for the job. Start-up costs are low, which makes this a great small business idea for young adults. Advertise your services around wealthy neighborhoods, and you will be sure to see success.