I've created a budget and am successfully saving around $1,000 per month. My cost of living is low and I have no debt. I've worked out that I have about 12 hours per week (mostly on weekends) to commit to a side project.<p>I'm looking for ideas. I'd like to develop my sales and product sense, so I'd rather create a business selling physical products rather than SaaS or consumer software/apps. Candy Japan is a big inspiration.<p>I could get a return on the cash with the standard personal finance approach, but I want to generate a return on my own.<p>Do you have a successful small-capital business, or an idea that might work?
Do you have room? Build yourself a workshop! Transform your dark ugly useless garage into a super cool man-cave! You will need various skills from cutting wood, to making wiring to get light and maybe have a bathroom in here or a sink?
You will get a lot of experience in being awesome, and get a new place to hang/work depending on what you build! On the way you will buy tools and stuff that might give you ideas for other projects once you done with this one!
What does success look like here?<p>Are you purely looking for additional income? If so, how much risk are you prepared to take on, are there any industries you don't want to work in, and what's your income goal?<p>Or are you looking to make income AND do something else? (That's the case for most people - very few people are just looking for money at the end of the day.)<p>If so, in addition to the questions above, what's the "something else"? Do you want to use skills you enjoy? Learn new skills? Help people? Help less fortunate people? Build something?<p>You've already mentioned you want to develop your sales skills. Why do you want to sell physical products specifically? Do you want to build something, or just do sales?
If I had that time and that money to spare I'd try my hand at selling mainstream electronics on Amazon, using their Fulfilment program. Buy items like Beats headphones wholesale, have them delivered to an Amazon depot, Amazon stock them and sell them for you essentially. Couldn't be simpler.<p>There are overheads for having them do so much, but I'd think profit was possible, and because of the simplicity it'd be incredibly easy to scale should it work.
If your looking to make a return, make a simple landing page offering low cost MVP builds (low cost because you will work on it in your free time) and I'm sure you will be able to take on clients quite easily. Especially if you take equity for a discount.<p>You can promote it on Reddit or here somewhere I'm sure.
To be honest the idea itself doesn't really matter.<p>Find some niche you love and you can talk about by heart. Then put marketing and promoting behind it and it will work out.