Most business start-ups require time before they produce an income. Time to find customers, time to develop an authoritative web site that attracts adequate traffic and time to learn what works and what doesn’t in your chosen area. What do you do when you suddenly find yourself in the position of having to make money now. This situation means that you have no income – or too little for your needs and you have to address the situation immediately.

So if you need to make money now, short of robbing a bank it can be hard to generate cash quickly. What you can do if things are very tight is to liquidate some of your assets. This means selling some of your treasured possessions or it can mean getting rid of some of the unwanted junk that you might have accumulated over the years. This is where eBay or some other online auction site can help you to make money right now.

However, if it is a case of simply wanting to speed up your money making capability, a different approach is required. This situation assumes that you may just have enough money to live on, but you are either short or want to improve your income in order to enjoy a better lifestyle. You probably would not be interested in any business that needs time to grow and mature before the money starts to flow. For example, internet marketing requires that you set up web sites to attract traffic in order that you can earn money from your visitors interest in the products on your site. Getting enough traffic can take time – search engine optimization can be a slow process.

One of the best ways to make money now is to look at your existing job or business (or both if you work and have sideline businesses). If you examine what you are doing now, there is strong chance that you can do some aspect of it better. Do not ignore what you are doing at the moment thinking that something new will pay better. The framework for what you are doing now already exists and it is likely that with a bit of tinkering you can ‘tune’ your activities to very quickly bring in more income.

Example – your current job

It doesn’t matter what you do – you can ask for overtime or, if your job does not provide for this you can negotiate a productivity based bonus perhaps. If either of these ways is not possible you may be able to duplicate your skills in your own time for private clients or for another employer. Try the outsourcing website elance.com

Example – a sideline business

If you currently have a sideline business you must step up the effort you put in! Instead of working as and when you can, set aside a specific amount of time each day. Even when you are tired after a full day at your normal employment, you are going to have to put in a further 2 or 3 hours in the evening working on your business – if you want to increase the potential income quickly. For example, if you are trying to raise your web site’s profile in order to receive more money making traffic – you simply need to write more content for your site and more content to submit for back links. The more you write – the more traffic will come!

In order to make money now you must be prepared to put in extra effort – there is no doubt that by increasing the diligence with which you approach either your day job or your own business – there will be a corresponding rise in income almost immediately.

One of the business opportunities that I examined in detail a number of years ago was setting up a contract cleaning business. I concluded that it was a viable business that could be started with little capital and little knowledge of the industry. I did not go ahead with this idea for a number of reasons, not because I could not make money now from it but because:

• The business required an ability to manage and motivate a large number of cleaning staff – I have been out of ‘people management’ for some time now and recognized my likely weakness;
• I had another business opportunity that I was following up in preference; and
• A friend had shown interest in setting up a cleaning business himself and I was content to assist him with it on a part time basis during the early days in return for a very small share as a ‘sleeping partner’.

Having seen the results over the past few years I am satisfied that the business model is sound, but the interaction with staff on a daily basis needs a strong people motivator – having worked in a professional environment for so long now I am too trusting and feel that a sergeant major type approach to this business is necessary.

You will begin to see what is needed for a contract cleaning business to work. You will employ a number of cleaning teams that will operate throughout various different locations, usually during the evening, through the night and sometimes early in the morning. You will need to ensure that the cleaning of offices and business premises is carried out to the stringent standards that you set. Cleaning contractors are notorious for providing a good service at the start, then dropping off in quality as time progresses.

A cleaning team of say three persons will need somebody to supervise them and check the work. In turn that supervisor will need to be checked and ultimately the business owner (you) will have to audit the work that is being done. Are you able to rule with an iron rod – yet cultivate trust and respect from your staff? If not you will both be taken advantage of and continually be having to recruit – a time consuming occupation.

Staff management is the key resource that is employed in this business. This is why it is being discussed first, before any talk of investment costs or profit potential. Without teams of cleaners working to a high standard, your business will be a non starter.

On paper, a contract cleaning business opportunity will make money right now for you. There is little in the way of investment in capital goods that is required and cash flow will be generated within a month of starting the business.

Profit potential is fantastic, with a gross margin of 50% and more, depending on how well you are at packaging a service product and selling it to business owners and managers. You will be paying relatively low wages for a premium service, sometimes marking up the wages by 3 or 4 times. This is why you need to establish a hierarchy of management so that everybody, from the most junior recruit all the way up to your supervisors, will be checked by someone. A promotion system similar to the one used for staff at the MacDonald’s franchises can help to inspire workers in what is admittedly a boring and poorly paid job. By sprucing it up with a corporate image, providing overalls with company colors and logo, paying a little above market rates and understanding that the business is not a method for making easy money now – but needs hard work and commitment like any other business opportunity – can pay dividends.

If I seem a little down on contract cleaning as a potential profit earner – think again. I was introduced to this business when I was advising a businessman about a problem he had with the tax authorities. He ran a contract cleaning business as a sideline from his main occupation and had not been declaring the profits from the sideline for over five years. The tax man was after him for £1,000,000 ($1,600,000) of unpaid tax!