Has any ones DYI projects turned into a full time job? im extremely

What kind of shop and what kind of tools?

What is your experience?

What other local businesses are there? Are you bros with any biz owners?

Best route to self-employment in da South on a budget is auto mechanic work and/or HVAC since heat pumps are life. Welding is a handy capability that goes with everything.
Auto HVAC is pretty easy and a moneymaker.

The best way to learn to wrench is formal training coupled with an entry level job at a shop. If no formal training is available it's common for noobs to help out at shops until they can perform work worth paying for. I've used that method all my life to gain skills and it pays off nicely. Though I'm already a decent mechanic I worked at a bros used car lot for a few months for specific car and truck building experience (many lots build stock from wrecks bought at auction plus many salvage parts from their or other donors) for all the parts I could pull for myself and they bought meals and drinks. It was better then a tech school and I brought gear I had they didn't like good cordless tools and a portable cutting torch.

Mechanics worth a shit always have more work than they can perform. If you are serious and have time, take a vo-tech course to start and learn modern electronics, fuel management and drivability diagnosis. You can work your way up to owning a used car lot, and stashing wrecks in back for parts then eventual scrapping. Learn how auto auctions work by attending them in EXPERIENCED company.

Construction is cyclic and there are far more unemployed jackleg "carpenters" than mechanics.

>>1041069
>I would be able to invest around 5k
that is absolutely nothing

If you already have some cash set aside, don't be in a hurry to spend it. Self-emploiyment will take a few years of learning, then working on the side, then seeing how you fit into the local ecosystem.

One reason I suggest wrenching is the cost of all your equipment is EASILY repaid even if you only fix what you own. I've done that all my life and though my main income was my career, DIY made me better at everything. No new car notes, no new homes, very low overhead, total convenience, getting my shit fixed correctly, all combine to pay off. If I didnt DIY I'd still have to work instead of being able to fully retire at 47.

How old is OP? Education level? Criminal record? Health? All those matter in career planning.

Getting the fuck out of your shit town is best idea. Come back to retire cheap after making money elsewhere. The South is a comfy place to retire.

>>1041085
>>1041076
Yeah sorry I left out a few key details also I should have said I want to be successfully self employed, here is my background
>30yr old
>Shop is just a 30x60 garage with 2 garage doors and concrete floor
>tools are basicly 2 or more of every size socket, wrench, all the miscellaneous one would acquire over 30 years (was my dads)

>when I was about 18 I got into purchasing auto cores exp, catalytic converters, batteries, aluminum rims ect, but that petered out after a few years there was a market crash and the price of that shit fell drastically

>im not much of a mechanic but i have done a lot of repair work on my own shit, and helped my dad out some just tinkering

>don't particularly like mechanicing

>did own a used car lot for about 2 years but, it was bleeding money from the get go, i couldn't get cars bought cheap enough or get them sold high enough, i would average $300 profit on a car and may only sell one a week if that due to shity local economy and not being able to buy here pay here

anyway maybe this helps some what

>>1041085
education: high school grad
criminal record: DUI 11 years ago
health: overweight and enjoy drinking a few beers every night

>>1041069
I try everyday anon. As a means to be free from slavery until my investments make me free from work

First off let me state that being self employed is not even close to as glamorous as people paint it to be.

Common myths:
>I get to set my own hours.
Not in most cases. If you are supplying a service, you work when there is demand. If you start your own window washing business. You will work daytime hours. If you are providing a product it is slightly more true but you are still expected to meet deadlines and obey noise ordinances. So you can't run a wood shop out of your garage in city limits at 4am.

>I don't have to take shit from people.
Not true if you want to succeed. You still need to get your tongue way up there when you are starting out because you need the business.

>Best way to become rich.
You're most likely going to fail, that is what statistics say. You will also find that most self employed people are not rich, usually far from it. Have a bad month? Enough to put you out of business. Get sued? Enough to put you out of business. Have a slow winter? Enough to put you out of business. Customer refuses to pay for a large job? Enough to put you out of business.

Being self employed is very shaky. You never know if you will be making enough money to afford the bills. You are easily going to put in more hours for less pay when you start out. Even after you get some momentum, you are going to be putting in more hours generally than if you were employed. Not having a boss means you are the boss and that you now get to be at the mercy of pissed off customers.

>>1041137
I know this, your correct

>>1041069
I would get into selling shit online. You already have a small warehouse. Your local economy might not be able to support you but if you sell nationwide it doesn't matter.

Find a niche, figure out how to do it better than the competition (NOT cheaper, that is the worst route to go), and figure out the best way to sell it.

Just to pull something out of mowhere: I've noticed no one really sells good first aid kits anywhere. Not even the Red Cross, not even online. You could sell actually good first aid kits that have Iodine, lots of gauze and bandages, bleeding stauncher, mylar blanket, maybe an epi-pen etc. Then build a good website and advertise carefully, maybe Adwords. Get some search and rescue team somewhere to use it and use their endorsement. Put it on Amazon. Charge enough to make a worthwhile profit on each one. Boom you're in business.

There are so many ideas out there. You could even get into a really specific field, like selling brass fittings for pressure washers and such. You don't have to make anything, just find something you can buy boxes of for cheap and resell at a big markup. Word to the wise: all the obvious stuff has been done to death. You won't make money buying rain jackets on Alibaba and reselling them. Well, maybe you will but it won't last long.

>>1041099
Those sound like the required credentials to run a small local brewery.

>>1041137
Self-employed here.

I had a window cleaning company for a year, subcontracted from a guy. He wanted to reduce my rate... couldn't make the numbers work with insurance, etc.

Ran an art gallery for a couple years, never turned a profit.

Had a service doing installation and design/build for museums, galleries, residential and commercial spaces. I did pretty well. The secret was to be REALLY good at what I did. I could charge by the job and do it 3 times faster and better than any competition. Therefore I was paid 3 times as much per hour and still get the best references.

>>1041137
All of that it's truth but it's wery well worthy if in the end you are not at the mercy of some faggot boss.

>>1041069
Start with social media. Start woodworking and upload pictures of beautiful scenery with your product, make it seem authentic, pretty much feed it to hipsters and overcharge.

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What about farming?

I've always found the low-tech lifestyle attractive. I already wake up at 4am every day and rarely ever play video games or watch TV anymore. The most I do online is 4chan on the shitter.

And for fuck's sake - stupid poor people have been farming for literally thousands of years, how hard could it really be with modern education and access to a digital compendium of all human knowledge?

>>1041563

fuck I love pa

>>1041563
Big difference between cash crop farming and homesteading.

>>1041714
Not in oregon

A mate of mine made some decent cash with a picture framing business. He had a glazier mate getting him cheap glass, and was using recycled hardwood floorboards for the frames. But it all depends on what the market is like around your area, are people going to pay good money for a polished hardwood frame made to size?

>>1041563
Do a bio-high quality-no shit farm and sell that to high class restaurant/rich family
You dont have to produce a lot but you need to have a good quality (thing is harder to do but profit $$)

I have always been a PC nut and I've been assembling my own PCs since I was in my early teens. I did the one man PC repair thing for a few years and man was it stressful. I'd get calls as late as 11 o'clock at night and as early as 4 o'clock in the morning. There were months where I was booked solid, running around to customers houses like a chicken with its head cut off. Then there were times where I'd barely be paying the bills and have to take other odd jobs to cover everything. When the economy tanked a few years back I got tired of the feast and famine and went back to school and got a few degrees

While I am not self-employed anymore I do make good money working for a technical support company (managed service provider). Its a lot less stressful, has better benefits and regular hours. Plus it is indoors and a regular commute.

Going around to people's homes can be so fucking terrible. Especially if you are 'the boss'. The amount of crap you have to deal with. I've been under the desk running wires in a house that is 120 degrees (no AC) with some hag chain smoking menthols while looking over my shoulder. Every surface in the place was sticky with tar. Even the carpets. And you haven't lived until you go over to someone's place and while you are trying to clean some massive virus infection off their PC they decide to just go to the 'store' for two and a half hours and leave their fucking two year old and four year old in your care. That was great let me tell you. After the first hour I called the cops, who brought in CPS. When the bitch showed back up they found a like $300 of meth on her. Of course, I never got paid. Then there was the time some guy swore up and down I brought back the wrong computer. Had all his stuff on it, same make and model, same performance, just not his PC. It was funny and sad but still a lot better than those assholes that try and stiff you on bills or approve work and then try to haggle the price down after you've completed the job.

>>1041563
without being raised on a farm or starting at the bottom rung, it'll be hard going.

Need to have basic maintenance and emergency fixes for tractors, trucks, trailers, ploughs, fences, irrigation and watering systems, etc etc etc. And that's before you learn how to farm. Crops or animals? by product or meat?

If you want to farm, go the live stock route. I've seen too many blokes been destroyed because it rains at the wrong time of the year, or it doesnt rain.

Also, get used to seeing large sums of money disappear quickly. It's not uncommon for even moderately sized farms potentially needed 20-50km's of fence done fairly regularly. And at anywhere from $1.30 to $2 a meter... And then something like a disc plough, that's $140k.

>>1041563
Im the negatve fuck above.

Maybe try something like growing trees on a small scale. Something like japanese maples grow fairly easily, need little space, and apparently make good money. Also little time needed, so you'll be able to go after other ventures.

>>1041563
>>1041714
>>1041836
>>1041863

OP here sorry for the delay, I actually am already farming, I have had a few beef cows (11 and 1 Bull) for the last 5 years that I purchased when I had a little extra money but they only bring in around $3500 after expenses ect, also they are getting older and aren't going to keep producing much longer. I have taken out a low interest loan in april to purchase some more cows as well as a used tractor but I have yet to buy either, anyway the years im repaying that loan aren't going to be profitable at all for me and even if it all works out like I hope it will still only be providing maybe MAYBE $7000 profit per year, that's why I need something else to do and just use the farming as a bonus..

>>1041069
>Asking DIY how to start a career of self employment

There's your first mistake. The best way to think of being self employed is doing something you'll relatively enjoy to keep yourself motivated.

There's no point in taking ideas from shills and people who work for other people when it comes to setting yourself up in work.

Think of something you enjoy doing or making. Look for the market. If it's there try and make money. If you can't put this together for profit, self employment isn't for you.

>>1042012
Forgot to add I am self employed. As someone mentioned, 5k is nothing. I spend that on fuel alone each year.

I've spent nearer to 30k in 2 years just on transport and tools. And that's all with a trade I'm really good at.

>>1041529
This isn't a business model as it's a fad. You might get the next 5-10 years out of it before people wise up to the fact you're flogging a dead horse.

>>1042012
I have to disagree DIY'ers are exactly the people who become successfully self employed, those fags over on /biz/ aren't going to be able to shed any light onto what a one ma operation with little start up money can do to make a living...
>>1042013
I realize 5k isn't a lot of money, but seeing as how I stated I already have a building/property and several tools ect that has to be valued at something....also I spend nearly 5k a year just in my pickup driving my kids to and from school and daily life shit lol that's less than $100 a week

>>1042018

Have you seen the kind of shit these people post? These aren't DIYers for the most part. They're chancers who pick shit up off road sides or people who think 3D printing is the same as making something out of raw materials. While I agree Biz isn't much better I don't think this board is really any good. There are a select few who do have a relative knowledge when it comes to making a living from something.

As I said above. You need to think of what you're good at, find the market for it then profit. If you can't do that yourself there's no point asking others.

>>1041563
nice pic, is that amish farm land?

Bumping one time just incase anyone has anything to add...if not I shall let it die

I'm in a similar boat except I'm unemployed.

I have a garage full of hand tools, woodworking tools, and metalworking tools. A 3D printer, CAD software and skills, a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I haven't found work in 9 months and I'm living off my savings.

I've been trying really hard for years to think of something that I can do and has a market. A product or service, but either my ideas are shit or the market is saturated.

It fucking sucks. Let me know if you ever figure it out.

>>1042632
This is what happens when you ship jobs overseas and grant illegals amnesty.

Too many people and not enough work. We'll be eating eachother by the end of the decade.

>>1042638
Completely agree. However, you forgot H1B visas.

Meanwhile we have corporations and colleges crying about how they need more engineers and college degrees. When they actually mean they need more engineers and college educated people to drive the cost of professional workers DOWN.

Fuck this gay earth.

OP here precisely why I didn't pursue a college degree, I inherited the fmiy farm I grew up on and knew I had no desire to leave it or my shitty town on a permanent basis....and with a population of under 10k ppl and one major factory that supports the entire town.... no need to have a fucking education

>>1041563

As a guy that grew up on a farm and has done some (smaller scale) low-tech farming/self-sufficiency stuff in his teens:

It's actually not terribly hard once everything gets going.
Until you get to that point... well... lots of work, but it's not necessarily intellectually hard or expensive.
Just keep in mind that deep-bed planting works wonders for your workload and yield, but it's very much limited in the scale that's possible. It'd save you on having to feed a horse though.

Also, don't forget to figure in replacement costs for tools and get at least a small forge going, for easy repairs like banging out damaged edges on spades and such.

If I'd go for it full-time, I'd build an Earthship for myself too, since that's much more economical than a normal house with regards to heating and such, and cutting trees for firewood is hard work.

If you mean modern farming:
Not possible with 5k, or anywhere near that.
A harvester alone costs 100k.

>>1042632
Weren't you the little shitstain flashing his degree on here like a couple weeks ago?!

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>>1042650

>>1042632
one-man manufacturing cell. people less educated than you do it all the time. you'd have to dump a bunch of money into production capital.

>>1041495
I can honestly say as a self employed person that this is true BUT not every job has a faggot boss.

I have a unique situation where a regular job is not doable for me. Most days I would happily trade for a stable job with a good boss. More so in the slow season.

>>1042669
what do you do?
>>1042660
what is that?

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>>1042703
>what is that?
its a churched up term for a one-man machine shop.

to put it simply, you have a bunch of computer controlled machines nested together and you make parts. what kind of parts? whatever.

i know 3 guys doing this. one does mostly aerospace, another does cheesy little brass fittings for the oil and gas industry, and the last guy just handles overflow from other machine shops/one-off jobs.

get yourself one of pic related, a lathe, and some measuring equipment and start your own backyard factory.

going to be honest with you though, you probably will never make more than $30 an hour after all the overhead is paid.

Flw ur drems OP
http://opensourceecology.org/

>>1041236
not a bad idea desu

everybody likes beer. My dad brews in the backyard doesn't look like it takes up too much stuff or requires expensive equipment (or a small time operation anyway)

>did own a used car lot for about 2 years but, it was bleeding money from the get go, i couldn't get cars bought cheap enough or get them sold high enough,

I worked for my highly successful carbro and learned a lot:

Were you buying them at auction as you should? Did you take payments which factored in "interest" but never charge interest? The beauty of that is customers get credit but you aren't stuck dealing with all the paperwork and regulation of interest payments. If they pay off early, it's the same money and it's more than straight cash. You negotiate every price so nothing is posted.

If people couldn't make payments, they could return the car instead of having it repo'ed and he'd tell them he'd "work with them" on the next car. He sold cars to generations of customers!

> i would average $300 profit on a car and may only sell one a week if that due to shity local economy and not being able to buy here pay here

>not being able to buy here pay here

That's why you should have financed as above. The trick there is also to clear the car on the first or second payment then collect the rest over time. If ya got say a 1998 F-150 at auction for 800 bucks and tossed a salvaged front clip on it for very little (have junkyard bros and a personal wreck stash) then sell it so you clear what you have in it immediately your cash is back in your pocket! The next ~couple grand over time is profit and because it's credit the customer doesn't care as much as if it were lump sum.

Even after shutting down the business to retire he had his son onsite receiving payments for most of a year.

You got some of the used car lot ballet right but there's more to it, most of which is simple. Scrap will be in the shitter for a few years but that's also a time to get cheap donor cars.

HOWEVER you do NOT operate a salvage which are heavily regulated. All your donors are your stock, not for public sale.

1043098 continued:
(You can still trade heavily with other carbros or do whatever.) Get to the magic hundred hulls and when scrap prices improve call the mobile crusher.

Once the process is going the money is steady. It bought carbro a nice house, fuckhuge pusher RV and many other toys.

Protip:
We kept our wrecker from being driven off by basketball Americans by installing a fuel pump fuse with one leg cut off every night.

They destroyed two steering columns while I was there and more before then, but we got columns free from salvagebro. Carbro could swap a 1990s Chevy column in under a half hour.

You may be burned out on cars, but they make money so keep what I wrote in mind.

He also knew towing companies who didn't feel like magistrating all their abandoned cars. They got parted and smashed.

>>1043098
To emphasize , we NEVER used the term "interest". Time payments are what they are. Total is unalterable unless he felt like it at the end if he was taking the vehicle back as a trade, though of course whatever got sold STILL GOT CLEARED when it left the lot.

Recently I have been getting into making leather armor, it seems to be somewhat popular. The pieces are pretty pricy online. I just placed my first order of leather. I have furniture/hvac/random project skills. I have been thinking if this goes well I could cut my hours at the 9 to 5 and start making an extra 1k a month with the armor thing

>>1042728
If you do that, spend a shitload of time on Practical Machinist and know your shit because machine shops get killed all the time.

You'll need to learn how to buy used machine tools without getting cornholed. You'll need either three-phase power or proper CNC rated phase conversion.

Machining is fun but it better be something you enjoy. Many companies delay payment because they deliberately treat you as a bank. Good if you like computers, CAD and CAM. You can convert older systems which used floppies to USB flash inexpensively. I did my bros Bridgeport and his turning center.

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/shop-management-and-owner-issues/

>>1043105
>1k month
God bless weebshits.

>>1043105
So wait, do you have potential customers already or leather-working experience?

>>1041076
-Auto HVAC
I don't think HVAC means what you think it means.

>>1041842
Jesus you must live in a shitty area.

I know a disabled guy nearby who builds PCs and sells them on Craigslist. I got a nice gaming rig for $500 from him. We got to talking and turns out he only makes money on like 1 out of 3 rigs he sells. If something sits more than a few months the parts are no longer worth as much as they were and he sells at a loss.
Didn't seem like a good hustle.

>When the bitch showed back up they found a like $300 of meth on her. Of course, I never got paid.
Shoulda sold the kids.

>>1042632
Could you market yourself online as a prototype developer? Like for people who have a gadget or invention they want to prototype. You could charge probably 3k for even something fairly simple and maybe provide a parts breakdown and sketches and stuff for larger scale manufacturing.
I don't know much about this stuff at all but it seems like with your tools and skill set it could work well for you.
That or start a Colin Furze-like Youtube channel.

>>1043357
Heating ventilation air conditioning?

>>1043363
I've been trying this for a while now. I've worked with 8 people and they are all trying to invent a perpetual motion machine or completely disappear when I start talking about the kind of cost involved in executing their idea.

The other part is that these individuals have no interest in paying for my services. I've done a couple hundred hours of free design and research so far.

Total revenue: $0

The biggest problem with this (and any business) is marketing.

>>1043377
Yeah you're talking to the wrong people.
I've built a website that gets me so many leads I sometimes have to shut it down. Use the webisue to be your salesman: you can have all the information someone needs right there and even give some pricing. That way the people who contact you are legitimate.
Like you said, it's all marketing. Get yourself in front of the people who are serious about getting a prototype built.

Also, never work for free. You could charge a couple hundred dollars to even give someone an estimate for a prototype. Hell, I would charge even more than that ($500?) and include a schematic for your prototype with the quote to actually build and ship the thing. The schematic being a rough draft that's not quite specific enough to send to a bigger manufacturer. That way you get payed for your research into how you're going to make the thing.
Anyone who isn't ready to cough up the dough, you just politely ask to come back when they're serious.
Google Adwords could be very helpful here, and a good website a must. You can learn to do this stuff yourself, and I recommend you do.

I already have a job, but would be it viable to make some extra money selling one-off crap that I just felt like making at the time? Or am I better off just dumpster diving printers and speakers, giving them a good dusting to solve whatever minor problem sent them to the curb, and selling them on craigslist?