It’s been many moons since I have step foot on a college campus. While I have many fond memories of my time in college, one memory stick out the most– how much I hated being broke. Fortunately, I was able to get a pretty decent job that kept a few pennies in my pocket but I was working 35 hours week. That kind of time commitment affected the classes I chose, the actiivites I could participate in, and the amount of time I could spend with peers. Today’s college students have many more choices avaiable to them. And the rise in entrepreneurial is also reflected on college campuses. Some of todays biggest companies started in college dorms.  Can you be the next Michael Dell or Bill Gates? Maybe.  But if you are just looking for a way to make some money on your terms, here’s a list to consider:

1. Tutoring/Coaching: If you are knowledgable about a subject and have the skill to teach others you will find someone willing to pay you.  Services like Crossloop can enable you to get clients off campus as well.
2.  Workout Buddy: Unless you are certified, I would stay away from calling yourself a personal trainer. But you could offer to assist people who need help in the working out area. For a fee of course. 
3. Iphone Apps Developer: If a nine year old can develop an iPhone application so can you. Read this interview for inspiration. 
4. Cleaning / Organizing Service: It is a dirty job but some one got to it. If you have the skills for cleaning and organizing, why not get pay for it.
5. DeeJay: With today’s technology you can be a DJ with an iPod and special portable digital turntables. No more carrying crates and crates of records.  
6. Website Designer: Put all that time you spend on Myspace to use. You can get clients from all over the country without leaving your dorm room. 
7. Ebay: I know everybody with a baseball card collection is on eBay trying to become a millionaire. But if you find the right niche you may be able to crave out enough profit to be worth your while
8.  Affiliate/Information Marketing: This is the latest craze that’s producing a thousand new gurus a day.  Do your research and get some solid information and this can be a decent money maker.  
9. Blogging: This one is my favorite (hmmm, I wonder why?). Blogs are easy to setup and usually require little money to get started. Like eBay,  there are a lot of bloggers but there’s always room for great content. And with great content comes traffic and the opportunity to monetize that traffic. 
10. Geek Services: Upgrades, backups, virus removal, crash recovery all of these things happen to college kids and if you know how to handle these things you can get paid.

There are of course more businesses that can be run out of a dorm room.  I am interested to here what ideas others can come up with. Leave a comment with your idea, let’s see if we can get this list up to 100 businesses!

After years of researching various ways to make money from home I have become convinced that the high rate of failure for home businesses has more to do with the types of busunesses people choose rather than the businesses themselves. What I mean by this is many people choose a home business for reasons like how much money they think that can make or how easy it might to run that business while maintaining their full time job. While these are valid considerations they have nothing to do with whether or not they will be successful in that business.  Every theory on being successful in life has at leadst one common theme: Build your business around your passions and success will come to you. Your passions are who you are. They help to make up your personality. So all of those people that fall for the marketing hype and go after whichever home businessses are popular for moment, are setting themselves up for failure. If you want to avoid making the same mistakes thousands of people make each year then you have to find businesses that match your passions and are suited to your personality. I can help you find those businesses. Let me you a little bit about myself.  

 Are There Any Legit Home Businesses?

A few years ago I decided that I wanted out of corporate life. It just wasn’t for me anymore.  I wanted to make a living doing something that I was passionate about, which was helping people.  But like many of the other ‘wage slaves’ I still needed a steady income to support my family. So I started looking for something that I could do part time to bring in additional income.  I’m sure you can image what I was confronted with; hundreds of sites promising to make help me GET RICH QUICK WITHOUT ANY KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, OR MONEY TO INVEST. All of this while I sat back in a beach chair and waited for the mailman to bring me checks.  I knew these were scams and  I paid little attention to them. But I was amazed at how many sites were dedicated to these types of marketing scams. What was even more amazing was the number of "legitimate, unbiased" review sites that promised to give fair and balanced information and they turned out to be another marketing ploy.  

The AHA Moment

But even staying away from the scams I still found little success with the ‘legit’ part time ventures I tried.  Things like eBay, Network Marketing products, and one on one computer coaching. I even tried being a real estate investor at the height of the real estate boom. And although I had some successes (I made some money) I never felt like a success. It was frustrating because I saw other people not as talented as myself making money doing the same things I was struggling with and I couldn’t understand why.  And then I had my AHA moment! I was still trying to do things I was not passionate about  and I did not suit my personality.  I realized that in order to be successful I had to find something that felt right to me. Something that I was so passionate about that I would do it for free. Shortly after that realization I started my blog, the Home Business Private Eye. And I stated helping people to find and start their own home businesses.  And now I ready to take it a step further. 

I’ve This Heard It All Before

Right now I’m going to stop because I can image what you might be thinking. "Yeah, Dakim, remember those hundreds of Get Rich Quick sites you mentioned earlier? Well, I’ve visited them too. And I’ve heard all of the promises that they make. And right now, you’re starting to sound alot like them!" Let me tell you what I am NOT trying to do here:

• Make you rich overnight
• Give you a secret formula that only the richest of people know
• Sell you a product, real or electronic, that you have to then turn around and sell to other people.
• Get you to join my team and then have you go out and get others to join your team. And so on, and so on.

No, what I am offering is much more simple.  I’m offering to help you find the types of business opportunities that your personality is suited for. Why is it important to find a business opportunity that matches you personality? Think about your life. I’m sure there are things that you can do well but you have no real interest in them.  It could be a sport or an activity like cooking. It could even be the job that you hate but it pays the bills.  Now really think about these activities.  Do you excel at them? The answer may very well be yes.  But I bet that it takes effort to accomplish this.  Probably more effort than you really care to give. And I also bet that you get bored or frustrated with these activities quickly.  The reason this happens is simple, they don’t suit you personally. Now there are people you may know that can do the same activities from sun up to sun down and love every minute of it.  They make it look effortless. These people are not abnormal.  Everyone has some skill or interest that they possess that they are passionate about.  The ’secret’ to being successful is to match these interests with the ability to make money doing them. And that’s where I can help you.

The Home Business Private Eye Business Matching Service.

Like I stated before the Home Business Private Eye site is about helping people find and start their own businesses.  The site gives truly unbiased reviews of business opportunities and a host of other resources to motivate and educate a would be entrepreneur.  The Business Matching service I am introducing takes it to the next level. I have developed a questionnaire that will help me to find the type of business opportunities that match YOUR  personality and interests. And when you are truly passionate about what you are doing you have a much better chance at excelling at it. Now, you may have come across other services that seem similar to what I am offering. Let me point few unique benefits of my service:

• This is not ‘feeder’ program for a particular service or product. I am not trying to steer you to one service or another. I do not benefit financially from any of the matches I provide to you.
• This is not a computer generated match service. Just don’t match you with whatever businesses are in your zip code. I handle all of the matches personally.  So it’s an organic match
• Each match is based on your unique responses.   

And probably the best feature of this service is that I’m introducing it at a very low price,  $49.95 $25.00 (Limited Introductory Offer for the 1st 100 customers) for 5 matches.  Why only $25? Because I am trying to gauge the market demand for this service. Believe it or not, there aren’t many services like the one I offering. In fact, I couldn’t find one the does it exactly like I am doing it. If you know of one please let me know about it. I want to offer the best service that I can so I would like see if there is something that someone is offering that I am not. So until I can get a better handle on the market, I’m offering to match you for a very nominal amount. To take advantage of this great offer all you have to do is click on this link to the Questionnaire Page and fill it out.  Once I receive your questionnaire I will analyze it and begin searching my database of businesses to find your matches.  You should receive your matches in your email inbox with in 3 business days. That’s it.  The rest will be up to you.

Yes, change has come to The Home Business Private Eye.com!

Welcome to the latest verison of my humble little blog. Even though it’s only the 3^rd verison, it’s light years beyond the default word press theme that I started with.  I believe that it was about two and half years ago when I launch my first blog and I remember being impressed with myself when I figured out how to change the default color scheme. Last week I handled the upgrade from Word Press 2.6 to 2.8 (without the benefit of the automatic upgrade function) and I’ve been tweaking the code on this theme to customize it to my needs. So, not only has the blog come a long way, it has dragged me along with it. 

Work in Progress

There is still much work to be done.  As I write this post I’m chatting with the support desk of my hosting company trying to fix some technical issues that are beyond my pay grade.  And there is still some tweaking I have to do on my end; like getting the header that took me a day and half to create to show. But I am doing this upgrade in stages so as not overwhelme myself. So please bear with me.  As it stands now the plan is to resume regular posting on July 6th.  That should give me enough time to complete all the tweaks, work out any bugs, and get the new services up and running. What new services you ask?!? Well its a secret for now but I plan to introduce them very soon.  All I’ll say is that I’m working on reducing the guest work some of you do when trying to find the right business.

Update: Due to the change in themes some of the formatting on some of the older posts is off.  I’m correcting them as I come across them.

Be The First in Line

I encourage you to subscribe  to the the blog.  It’s easy and free. And when I complete the work on the new services I’m developing , I’m going to annouce them to subscriber list first. And, they will be able to get a first come, first serve discount (Shh that’s a suprise so don’t ruin it for them).