Cash Now

Your hobby + a computer = extra money

Related Topics:

•  

Making Money Online

There are hundreds of stories about ambitious people who quit their jobs to start businesses in their garages, worked 80-hour weeks, sold their companies and wound up rich. This isn't one of them.

Instead, this is about the growing number of average people who are spending their leisure hours selling hobbies and services on home computers and the Internet. With full-time salaries stretched thin and the cost of necessities rising, more people are looking for low-risk ways to earn extra income.

"The Web is a great place to shop and spend money, but it's pretty great for making money too," says Joanne Pratt, a Dallas-based adviser to the Small Business Administration on at-home commerce.

More than half of all small businesses are based at home, according to the SBA. "Computers, Internet access, cell-phone technology and simplified web-page design software have all become cheaper and faster in recent years, making it easier to launch some type of at-home enterprise without sinking a lot of money into it," says Simon Yates, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

Most people who run an at-home business use a desktop computer, connect to the Internet and live in a household where the average annual income is $65,000, reports Forrester. To manage the extra cash, many entrepreneurs are using accounting software programs for small businesses, such as Intuit's QuickBooks line, which generated revenue of $654 million last year -- a jump of nearly 100 percent since 2000.

"If you're the slightest bit entrepreneurial, you can reach large numbers of consumers instantly over the Internet, while key-word searches at Google let consumers reach you just as quickly," says Pratt. "The Web is an amazing marketplace."

How can you turn your PC into a cash machine? It's easier than you think: