People often sit there and try to think about ideas to make money from home, when in actual fact the answer could be staring them in the face.

Let me explain...

Where do you live? Do you have a local nearby town? Maybe you live in a busy town with shops, local businesses etc.

Let's just think about all those local independent shops, all those self employed builders, mechanics, painters, dog groomers... (the list goes on)

Now they probably can't afford the huge marketing budgets that the big supermarkets or big shop chains have so they usually rely on word of mouth or local newspapers & magazines.

So, let's just think back to my post explaining affiliate marketing. Why not approach those local traders & offer an affiliate deal. In the same way that ClickBank pays you a commission  for each sale you could offer them a similar business deal. For every sale you get them over xx, you then get a specific percentage.

You could get cards or flyers printed up that the customer has to produce at the checkout. Maybe the shop will put a special offer on or offer a percentage off as an incentive to help.

Now of course the question of trust will pop up here. How will you know that the shop owner is being honest with you with regards to how many customers you got in through the door. But we'd like to assume that your work generated more sales for him & he will more than likely want to keep the business agreement intact. So with that in mind he is more likely to be honest with you.

I'm sure every day you see new "For Sale" signs going up around the area. Keep an eye out & then pay close attention to when that sign gets replaced by a "Sold" sign.

You could target these homes in a couple of different ways. Let's think for a second how we could monetise in that scenario...

By posting a flyer or knocking on their door (if you know they have moved in & are there that is)

Offer a service to: Tidy the garden (maybe you noticed the previous owners weren't exactly, bothered about the appearance shall we say)

You could also use these new residents with the above affiliate idea above.

Maybe you already have a service you can offer. Are you a painter or decorator? Using the Sold Sign technique you are already one step ahead of your competition!

Website

Have you been building your own websites yet?  Check online & see how many websites are actually dedicated to your local town, just search your town name & have a look down the search results.

Find many? If your answer to that is no, then brilliant. Why not look at starting a website for your town. There are a few different angles you could look at..

A town directory based website. List of shops, local businesses etc.

Where to go, local places of interests.

Nightlife: Clubs, pubs etc. an "after-dark" kind of theme

Take a look around & see what kind of area it is & what you could advertise. You could charge the businesses to advertise or just do a free listing & only charge for, say, the main home page.

If there is another similar website, look at it & see how you think you could make yours better. What is it missing, that kind of thing.

Look at your local area & then try & think outside the box.